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.