End of a Line?

    Before I began to write what will be my last blog entry of 2014 I read some of the titles of my previous blogs. I did this because I wanted to get a sense of what I'd written about over this past year, so much has happened and the memories become muddled together. I see that many of my blog titles have been one word and have also been something close to virtues or ideals. I didn't start out thinking of writing the type of blog I have, it was meant to be more informational and less cerebral, but I hope I have still gotten my point across. That point is farming is fun and work, rewarding and disappointing, requires hoping for the future but also requires looking backward. These points almost seems antithetical and yet they are, as we have learned this year part of farming. We have invested a lot of ourselves and our resources into this project, not only physically but emotionally as well, and there have been rewards and trials to accompany those investments.
    We have been rewarded with a bountiful harvest from our garden and a freezer still full of produce. We leaned how to blanch and freeze our produce, we made ice cream from freshly harvested raspberries, Kathy made refrigerator pickles and she even sold some which was our first produce sale. We added a new doe named Isis to our herd of rabbits and had more litters and produced more rabbit meat than ever. We also lost long waited for crops to infestations of worms, moths, beetles and every creepy crawly thing you can imagine. We lost our first buck, Chase, to a still unknown malady and a few months later his only surviving son followed him to a similar end. I know that they were farm animals and yet I had so much invested in them emotionally that I felt my heart was torn in two as I watched them falter. I did learn to watch for symptoms and I may have saved Iris and Isis from falling to the same condition, I'm wiser because of my two bucks.
   The last blog I wrote spoke of waiting games and those games are almost at a conclusion for my rabbit herd. I bred Isaac to Iris and Isis just before his failure of health became evident and although the process and outcome was suspect in my eyes I have maintained a sense of hope that I would be able to continue Chase's lineage. The waiting game is close to over and neither doe had kindled and by tomorrow I should know if that line will continue or not. Isis continues to give me reason to hope for a litter sired by Isaac but Iris does not and so the waiting game continues for one more day. The reason for waiting this final day is that it is the maximum gestation period for a female rabbit and so New Years day will dawn with a new year but also, perhaps with the end of a line. I won't give up on breeding rabbits, it's not in my nature to quit so easily but I am faced with the fact that where I started and where I hoped to end up may not be the same place. If there is an end to this line then I'll start another, but I'll be much wiser and more experienced. I hope anyone who reads this blog will come to appreciate the work and dedication it takes to run even the smallest farm and that you might even want to try it yourself. If you ride a train to the end of the line takes you to your journey's end, if we arrive at the end of Chase's line it will be only the beginning of something new.

Waiting Games

    Much has happened on the farm since I last wrote. The winter solstice has come and gone and very slowly now the days are growing longer, although the cold which usually accompanies winter's arrival has remained to the north. This is not entirely a bad thing as I have two does which should kindle this weekend and the less than arctic chill will help the little hairless kits to stay alive until they are nestled under mom's nest of hay and fur. Isaac had to be put down and in true farmer fashion I performed and amateur necropsy to report to the vet on my next visit. I did this with tears in my eyes as Isaac reminded me much of his father Chase who I had grown to love. I also did this because two of my does seem to be suffering from what ever ailed Isaac and Chase. Isis and I went to the vet armed with this information and some poop for testing and what we got was very little results. The tests revealed nothing and she encouraged me to continue with treatment I have developed and been following. Isis is pregnant and due to kindle Saturday as is Iris and so preventative antibiotics are out of the question. I continue to feed them lettuce, carrots, celery and anything they will eat to keep them from losing weight and I play the waiting game. I wait to see if they'll start to eat after kindling and I wait to see if the blood line I was pinning my hopes on will continue. I wait to see if I'll be disappointed and wonder how much more disappointment I can put up with in one year.
     There are other projects on the farm that need to be completed. The raspberry canes need to be cut down and the chicken run needs to be finished but time, weather and money have had most of our projects on hold. The weather hasn't been cold enough to allow the raspberry go dormant enough to cut and the rain has kept me from doing anything with the chicken run. I had hoped to buy more hanging hutches and materials for another structure but money hasn't allowed for that. I had hoped to have the hard cider bottled by now but with an exceptionally slow fermentation it still sits in the carboy waiting for my hard working yeast to complete their job and so I play the waiting game.
    We have also had some great successes on the farm. I sold our first trio of breeder rabbits and we have processed more rabbit meat than ever. We had our facebook page liked by Buy CT Grown, which promotes the buying of local farm grown products, this should provide some great exposure for our little farm and hopefully move us toward our goal of becoming a full time rabbitry. I also had my first contact from a local restaurant about featuring rabbit as a bimonthly menu item. This summer after numerous visits to the town hall we obtained approval to have honey bee hives in town which we hope to add to our farm within the next two years. We also added sun chokes to our garden plot, a first for both of us, which is a highly saleable item in many farmer's markets, co-ops and health food stores. We need to add more more rabbits, hutches, and purchase hives and bees to make this happen and so we play the waiting game. Patience is listed a biblical virtue and as much as we need it in life we certainly need it on the farm. Farming requires patience, tenacity, planning, endurance, hope and waiting all of which we have grown in this last year. I hope you'll continue to play the waiting game with us and see how this " Little Farm in the City" does from here.

Measurements

    Today marks just ten days until the winter solstice arrives marking the end of fall and the meteorological beginning of winter. The full cold moon has come and gone and the nights are continuing to grow longer and the days shorter. We all measure things every day often without thinking about it, but sometimes with great planning and intent. We measure time and distance, we measure our years and we measure success and failure. The farm is different in many ways and not so much in others. On our little urban farm I tend to measure our successes or failures based on our production goals and the learning of new skills. I tend to measure time in the amount of daylight I have to work on the farm or the number of days I have left to prepare the gardens for spring planting. There is a lot that went well and a few things that did not turn out as I wished. The garden harvest was for the most part a huge success, we picked, blanched and froze a lot of produce. I have yet to tally the litters of rabbits we had this year but I have the general feeling that it has been a good year. I am happy with my return to zymurgy after a good session of bottling our freshly brewed stouts and as I sit and watch the gentle bubbling of the airlock of a slowly fermenting batch of hard cider. There have been many positives on the farm this year.
    I have also been measuring our success by the establishment of a good bloodline of rabbits. My goal has been to establish a good pedigree of rabbits so I can sell breeder rabbits, have really good meat production and establish a line of show rabbits. That goal was made more difficult because our buck Chase started losing weight for unknown causes and he eventually had to be put down. I was fortunate enough to have the foresight to save a buck that he sired and so could continue the line I wanted to establish. I have been faced with further difficulty as Issac seems to be succumbing to his father's illness but at a much younger age. Issac will also have sired two litters before he can't breed again and the choice that is in front of me is difficult. I haven't determined if this is a genetic problem or if it is environmental issue and so my choice to save his offspring is not as clear as I wished it was. I am measuring my success on the lineage of rabbits I have yet to prove and yet I am unwilling to give up on the progeny of the buck I grew to love.
    The days of some are measured in the hours until the weekend arrives. Here on the farm I am measuring them in the time to ferment the current batch of hard cider and the gestation period of my currently pregnant does. The measurements of the farm are easy in some ways and difficult in others it is after all hard to measure progress of things controlled by nature. Many people measure progress in tangible results and while we do that to some extent there is a difference in our measure of success. I will continue to chart our progress and attempt to measure that progress by the feeling of satisfaction we feel from our efforts on the farm. It is tempting to get caught up in measuring our success by the physical evidence of the things we produce but I am committed finding and participating in the joy and satisfaction of knowing that we have stayed our course. Kathy and I started this project with the idea that we could grow produce and animals that are better than we can get in the supermarket and to enjoy our efforts as well. Measurements are fickle by nature but as we continue this project I hope that we can truly share the measure of our success.