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.

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.

Long nights and Zymurgy

    I am sitting here writing this newest blog and listening to the sound of mixed precipitation falling on the roof. It's been almost three full weeks since I returned to work full time and the shortness of the days has really impeded progress on the farm. Ethan and I managed to string one course of hardware cloth around the bottom of the chicken run and I hope to do another course this weekend. I have managed to turn the top layer of the compost over and the only thing left standing in the garden plots is the spent raspberry canes. The light of day has become a very precious thing and I am trying to squeeze every bit of production out of those short sunlit hours. Last weekend I sacrificed some production on the farm to break a three year hiatus of brewing with my brother. We made three different styles of stout and as we boiled wort run off from grain and added hops I remembered how much I love zymurgy. Zymurgy is the study of the process of fermentation and it can be as  simple or complex as the brewer makes it. I love the whole brewing process, the smell of sugars being washed from freshly milled grains, the aroma of hops as they are poured into the brew kettle and the challenge of the boil as we attempt to arrive at our desired specific gravity. Last weekend was successful on many levels and although we were a bit rusty we quickly knocked off the cobwebs and had a very good brew session. Monks often used the dark and long days of winter to create some of the world's best known beer styles and it felt as if we were once again following in some very old footsteps.
     Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and even though I'm not working the day will be spent with family and friends instead of working on the farm. There is a part of me which feels like I'm squandering the daylight hours but I have reminded myself that this is a day for celebrating what we've been blessed with and giving thanks for and sharing those blessings. There are farm chores that will need to be done but those are easy tasks and won't take much time. I have been leaving lights on over the rabbit hutches to simulate summer daylight so the does will be more inclined to mate with our buck. In an attempt to defy the long nights of the season tomorrow I'll breed the first of the does and the remaining does will be bred this weekend. Hanging hardware cloth and breeding rabbits will be almost all that's done on the farm this week but there will be one more thing to do. Once again zymurgy is involved and I'll have Kathy pick up five gallons of late season cider from Woodstock Orchards; I may be partial to this orchard since I worked there years ago. I'm a true New Englander and in the typical style of our region I won't be making typical hard cider but New England style hard cider. We have to deal with cold winters here in the northeast so we like to have a bit more warmth to our cider. I'll be adding five pounds of brown sugar to the cider which will add, in typical New England style, about four to five percent more alcohol to the cider. There probably won't be much more that I can accomplish this weekend.
     I've spent a great deal of time reading about the lifestyle of farms of yesterday and we have been modeling our farm to match those times. Kathy and I believe that this simpler lifestyle is a more healthy one, both physically and mentally. Today's farms are places of constant, even frantic places of busyness with little consideration for the animals, land or people that live and work on them. The short days and long nights have been supplanted by electric lights, crazy fertilizing practices and round the clock agriculture. Tractors with lights allow for all night harvesting and intensive breeding and growing practices sacrifice quality for quantity. When I look at our twenty-four hour, seven day a week culture and see how quickly appreciation for the slower, smaller things of life are lost I find that I'm happy with some long nights mixed with a bit of zymurgy.