Waiting is Hard

  I have written that the old farmers guide is don't plant until after the last full moon in May, which has come and gone. I know that in New England and in Connecticut in particular we can see frost until about the 20th of the month so we'll have to wait past the full moon. We often wait until Memorial Day to plant and even that is about as early as it can be this year but we have to wait. Kathy purchased bell peppers, tomatoes, habanero peppers, kale and patio tomatoes to be planted next weekend. I prepared the ground for putting in the seeds we have purchased and this coming weekend we will plant corn, green beans, pickling cucumbers, crooked neck squash and winter squash in the garden. It was so nice this weekend that I wanted to put plants in the ground but I knew I should wait. The weather forecasts are for low temperatures in the 40's and even though that won't kill the plants they won't grow that well either so waiting is hard.
   There is still a lot to do on our little farm and the rabbits which were marked and weighed last weekend were remarked and weighed again this weekend. They have all gained weight, some more than others, and so the time to process them is coming up rather quickly. I have more orders than I can fill which is a good thing and all the does appear to be pregnant again. There is a method for assuring that the does are pregnant which is called palpation. Palpation is somewhat of an art as you are feeling for structures hidden deep or shallow in tissue. I am a certified phlebotomist and am familiar with palpation and in fact I'm really good at it. When I was going through my course in blood drawing my instructor said I was a natural of which he'd only worked with one before me. I worked at the Red Cross and because of this ability to feel veins other people couldn't I became a hard stick specialist, in other words if there was a vein other people couldn't feel I could. Palpating rabbits is a bit different, they're not sitting patiently while you probe them, they bounce all over the place and resist your attempts at feeling for the kits which are the size of an olive at this point. So I do my best, having had no formal instruction on this type of palpation, and I think I feel something so now I wait for the date they are to kindle and waiting is hard.
   I know we have only a few followers of this blog and I really want it to grow. I want more people to see this blog not out of pride but because I want more people to realize that they can do what we are doing. There are other people who have the same amount of land or more or less but I want them to know it's possible to raise your own meat and vegetables on a very little piece of land and have a dream of bigger things. I want other people to know that we don't have to live off of the terrible offerings of factory farms or be beholden to corporate boardroom decisions about how our food is grown. I want people to know we can change how and what we eat in our back yards but waiting is hard.
    So here's a look at what we're doing. Hopefully you'll find that you'll be looking for our next post and you'll find that waiting s hard.