Perspiration and Inspiration

  It has been a full two months since I posted and I have been wondering if anyone following our blog has wondered if the blogging is over and we have admitted defeat in our urban farming effort. I often refer the moons in my posts as they have a certain relevance to hunters and farmers. To put things in perspective the full worm, full pink and full strawberry moons have passed and the full buck moon is just ten days away. The full buck moon is when the male deer start growing their antlers in response to fall and the coming rut and when hunters start scouting and planning the next harvest of meat for the coming winter. It seems winter has just left and summer not yet arrived, the spring was cold and dry and the gardens have suffered as a result of our fickle New England weather. Fall and winter are on the minds of those who hunt, trap and grow things for food and they are coming. Trappers are already taking inventory of their supplies and dying traps for the coming season, hunters are scouting for the perfect spot to place a deer stand and I am aware as I transplant our brussel spout seedlings that they are small for this time of year.
   This year has been difficult and I have had many more orders for rabbits than I have had rabbits. The unyielding cold of winter gave way to a dry spring, I planted over one hundred onion sets and twenty-five sweet potato slips but less than twenty-five percent survived. We lost rabbit kits to unusually cold spring nights and have questioned whether it's worth the effort but we after all have decided to be farmers. To say I have had more perspiration than inspiration is an understatement. Things have not gone as I envisioned them going and it has been a struggle but I started this blog so you could follow our successes and failures and so now I have shared them both.
    Things have taken a turn for the better and we have had several litters of kits since the misses of two months ago. I have just about given up on keeping alive the line of Chase our first buck and now have two bucks vying to replace him. I loved that guy,which may have been a downfall in recognizing a faulty line but now I have two great looking bucks to sire future generations of rabbits. We harvested only a bit of asparagus and let the rest go but it was a step in the right direction. The remaining sweet potato slips are growing well and if they continue we still may harvest seventy pounds of sweet potatoes this year. The kale is gang-busters along with green peppers and squash. The chickens arrived a month ago and while we are still waiting for eggs they have provided a source of entertainment on our little farm. Things are beginning to click on the farm, we are making adjustments which we are learning is what farming is all about, but we we persist. Perspiration and inspiration almost feel like the same thing at this point, keep following us because we are dedicated to this mission and we will have what we set out to have, the best meat, eggs and produce the one little 1/10 of an acre patch can produce.

Signs of Life

     Once again it's been nearly a month since the last blog but things have changed. The last post described the ground as unyielding as stone and the deep cold of winter as never ending. I must admit that this winter has been tough even for a seasoned New England hunter and trapper like me. As a fur trapper I often deal with sub-zero temperatures and crazy amounts of snow, I trap muskrat and beaver under twelve plus inches of ice frequently checking traps at three in the morning but I must admit this winter was tough. We still have the farm to run and rabbits to breed and sell but the harsh winter made things very difficult and only one litter was born during the deep cold. We bred the does in March but only one took and the other two missed, which is a term rabbit breeders use to describe a pregnancy which doesn't happen after breeding. Last year I bred all three does at the end of February and we had three litters in March but we had Chase, I can't say if that was the difference but my heart says it is, I miss my faithful buck..
     Kathy and I had gone to Vermont, lots of snow, for a quick break and had hoped for litters of rabbits a few days after our return. We were instead blessed by one litter and two misses once again there was disappointment but two weeks later things have changed. The snow is gone and the soil can be worked, all the frost is gone and so the real work begins. We have had a few days in the sixties and the warm soil has granted plantings of lettuce and another chance to breed the does. I have cut the raspberry canes, covered them with rabbit manure and wood mulch to prepare for the coming growing season. I have cleaned most of the debris left by the harsh winter and we have found, much to our pleasure, that the blueberry bushes are doing well.
     I have a new job now which demands many more hours of my time but I am still devoted to the growing of our farm. I have been working many more hours than I care to but I have still had a chance to work on the farm. All the beds have been treated with a fresh layer of rabbit manure and most of the old stems have been clipped and composted. I walk through through the paths of our little farm and notice the changes, I can see the rhubarb leaves spring up and see shoots of asparagus pushing up through the soil, it's almost time to think about planting season. We have been cleaning up the garden beds and waiting for spring, which came and went almost a month ago. We are ready to start this busy season, the does have been bred once again, lettuce has been planted in containers, the chicken run has been enclosed and all around us there are finally signs of life

Frozen Ground

    Once again it's been a month since my last post, the Full Worm Moon has come and gone and in a few days the Full Flower or Pink Moon will grace the sky. I have walked the grounds of our farm and snow still predominates the landscape and there is little chance of planting onion sets by April 6th as we did last year. The kits have grown to nearly processing weight and Jeremiah, our replacement buck, looks great. Two of the three does are bred and soon Iris will be as well, all signs of spring and yet winter hangs on. The farm seems to be on hold, almost held in suspended animation, waiting for the weather that will allow growth of both animal and vegetable. The chicken run has yet to be finished but the pullets have been ordered and paid for and will arrive May 16th ready or not. 

    I didn't run a normal trap line as is my habit during the fall due to rotator cuff surgery but a friend of my son called and asked for help with a beaver problem. He had bought a new home in November and while they were moving in a family of beavers promptly cut down some twelve trees, when I had surveyed the damage I agreed to trap the colony. The winter has been productive with four large beavers caught, which will be turned into a beaver blanket and today I set once more to catch the remaining offending landscapers. The winter has been tough for trappers in Connecticut but we have persevered and trapping is part of what I do on the farm and so the harvest of beaver fur fits in nicely with our mission.

     There are still many chores waiting to be done on the farm which should have already been done, The raspberry canes should have been cut down in February and yet they stand as tall as they did at the end of the season, the bases finally visable after being buried under a four foot blanket of snow. The aparagus and rubarb are awaiting a coating of rabbit manure which still alys frozen under the hutches. Some of our ground is bare and free of snow cover and yet it lays as hard as rock unyielding as the stone it resembles. We are ready to begin our planning and planting and still we wait for the thaw of frozen gound.

Lunar Rhythms

   Once again it's been a while since my last post, almost a month to the day if I'm not mistaken. The winter has been brutal this year with crazy amounts of snow and brutally cold temperatures. These factors all add up to difficult farming. My last post reported about the nature of the problems with our kits and the remedies we found and I'm glad to report all the remaining kits have not only survived but are thriving. I have received several calls about rabbit meat and have had to respond that my faithful customers will receive what they ordered and all others will have to wait. I must admit that I may have printed business cards a bit too early. We are entering the last week of February and the cold full moon has long since waxed and waned and we are eagerly awaiting a sign of spring. February is a difficult month because, although the days are now noticeably longer the cold of winter remains and may even deepen. Native Americans often called the moon of this month the full hungry moon because many resources had been used up and there was little in the way of harvest or hunting to supplement the food supply. I have found this to be true this winter, my trapping lines are shut down and I dare not breed the rabbits as I had planned, the deep cold has changed my breeding plans for the farm.
    As I sit and write this next entry to the window of  our little farm I look out the bay window and see uncut raspberry canes and consider what needs to be done. I had planned to let those canes die off in the brutal cold and then trim them back but then the blizzard came, now trimming may have to wait well into spring and I'm concerned about our future raspberry harvest. The gardens needed more rabbit manure for fertilizer but it froze and so that too will wait until the snow pack is gone. I walk outside and see that all of our garden plots are buried under at least three feet of snow and wonder if we'll ever plant a garden again. The chicken house and coop are buried and next month I will put a deposit on six Golden Comet pullets, I think to myself where will they live? The rabbits have had the heat lamps on longer now than they've had them off this winter and I wonder when will this end.
     The moon guides a farmers choices and it guides mine. There are rhythms to the lunar calender and we have learned to watch and follow those rhythms. I have mentioned full moons of all types, full beaver, full wolf, full cold and so on and now I will wait for the soon to be full worm moon and after that the full flower moon. The Farmer's Almanac says that you need to wait until the last full moon in May to plant the garden and wait we will. We measure our chores by lunar rhythms and are waiting for the worms to awaken and chew through our garden plots. We are waiting for the last full moon of May to begin our planting season but I may just try to begin our newest litter of rabbits in the shadows of  the New Worm Moon.

Learning in the Deep Cold

   It's been nearly a month since my last post and this is not because there has been nothing to write about but rather I have felt less than inspired to write. My last post was a bit of a recap of our year on Late Bloomer Farm and I mentioned the faltering of Chase's line quite a bit. I typically do an accounting of how well the rabbits did at the end of December, recording such things of number of litters per doe, loses of kits, food costs and so on. I do this to see how well I'm doing as a herdsman, to get a feel of what I should be charging for the rabbits sold and to try and learn from my successes and failures. I did this accounting and felt that I lost too many rabbits compared to those produced; many were lost without my knowing the cause. My rabbit business has certainly been less successful than I hoped it would be but if I want to make this a full time venture I need to learn and so learn I have.
     January is a difficult time for the gardener as there is only planning for spring to occupy his time and if you have honey bees you bite your nails hoping that your hives made it through the difficult New England weather. Raising rabbits during this time of year is difficult as well and often kits are lost to the bitter cold of the winter. I mentioned in my last post that neither Iris nor Isis were pregnant and I lamented the lose of Chase's line but Sissy kindled two weeks later with a litter of nine kits which was the largest we've ever had. They weren't from Issac but I was pleased none the less and watched vigilantly over the kits. I took them in every night during the deep cold of January until they had their fur coat but I still lost three kits which I found frozen on the wire floor of the hutch. I blamed Sissy for being a poor mother and brought them back in the house at night to keep them warm and keep them from their " evil" mother. I was pleasantly surprised on morning when I came down stairs in the morning to find all the kits out of the nest box because this proved Sissy was not at fault but rather the kits had crawled out of the nest box during the night, something I didn't think they could do at this age, and met their demise. I have since changed my management strategy and the remaining six kits are thriving.
       As you know from my other posts we not only raise rabbits and garden but we also are trying to rely on other means to support our way of life, this includes fishing, hunting and trapping for both meat and fur. I received a request from a friend to remove a colony of beavers which were chewing down every tree on his newly purchased property. Trapping is difficult in winter because everything is frozen but beaver, however, move freely under the iced over water of their homes. I took a look at the property damage and immediately agreed to remove the beavers which had taken down at least twelve trees and nearly dropped one on their shed. It has been a few years since I trapped beaver and the sets that I normally use wouldn't work in this situation. I reached out to a few trapper friends and they arrived at a consensus at what set would work. I agreed and immediately set two traps in the manner recommended and within three days had three large beaver. Beaver pelts are much lower in value than many other furs but much harder to process so I have decided, in typical live off the land fashion, to have them tanned and make a beaver fur blanket. The carcasses will be butchered and either donated to the owl, hawk and eagle preservation society or consumed by folks at our next game supper. The winter is often slow for all but dairy farmers but we're busy at Late Bloomer Farm and learning lots of lesson in the deep cold of the full wolf moon winter.