Farm life has been busy to the point that is has been difficult to do anything accept manage the farm. We are all back to school and Carly is in full force managing the house to ensure that every living thing on the farm is cared for and loved. Instead of sitting around waiting for plants to grow we are harvesting some of our labor and making certain that the fruit on our vines is well maintained so we don’t lose our investment. There are many things that have happened in the last month, and there are lots of pictures to share. We’ll start with the volunteer garden, then harvesting, and finally our rabbits.
Our volunteer garden is out of control. This picture is about three weeks old, and the growth has been overwhelming since then. Artichokes that were planted on purpose are blooming, tomatoes are weighing down vines, and cucumbers are crawling along the ground growing out into the street.
This roma volunteered and now has fruit that is waiting to turn.
We have put up metal grating to discourage our cucumbers and melons from growing out into the street. Today this grating is completely saturated with leaves, flowers, and fruit.
Tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, and cucumbers all sit on the edge of the street. It is difficult to contain but fun to drive up our driveway extra slow to see if we can see any new fruit. We have had people bring up concerns that our crops in the front yard will get plundered by passersby, but we almost welcome it. If we can share just a little of what God and Nature gave us for free then they can have it!
When we have potatoes bursting out of the ground and all we do is pour "duck tea" on the ground and water regularly then sharing our wealth is the least we can do. Although the harvest has been good, it hasn't been as abundant as planned.
Ethan harvested some of our cherry tomatoes with Carly last week. As a matter of fact, Ethan has really embraced the farm now that he sees the changing of the plants and their tasty benefits. Our cherry and pear tomatoes are still the only ones that have fruit that is consistently turning.
If you look in this harvest of red and black cherries along with yellow pears it is really hard to be disappointed. We have had fresh tomatoes almost every day. When we can't take it anymore, we will make sauces and stew the extra.
Through the chain link we use as a tomato cage. Tabouli, diced tomatoes on fried bread, salads, eggs, and pasta with pesto are just the beginning of what we have yielded from one delicious plant.
We also dug up potatoes. Oh my, delicious potatoes! We planted two small purple potatoes that we bought for $1 in the spring and dug up over five pounds of these beauties. The night we first ate them we mashed them with this huge volunteer Yukon which was probably a pound all by itself.
When we finished the mash it was the faintest lavender. We ate it alongside some wilted kale that the kids all ate with expectations of seconds. When we planted our garden we didn't plant with expectations of yield but of uniqueness. The kids ate blue potatoes! They eat fruit and vegetables that are different than the grocery store. They don't only eat fresh vegetables, they eat vegetables that are difficult to find in a Winco or Safeway. It is fun. And we love seeing variety and color on our plates.
We let Sebastian, our buck out with our two does about a month ago. We built a rabbit run out of hay bales and saw them scrape, feed, and play. We also watched Sebastian mate; which meant that we would have some kits soon. When we saw Bigwig start to nest and pull her hairs we knew it was time to nest ourselves. We purchased lumber and wire to make a hutch. Ethan helped eagerly. I had a decent design that I communicated poorly to Carly. When she found flaws in it I was still unwilling to make amends. To add insult to injury I slammed the screwdriver into my thumb. The scab is still healing. Alas, we still got the hutch built. Just as we built a nest for her, she completed her nest and had four kits overnight.
Ethan reviews his handiwork and looks in on the kits that are brand new in the hutch. By building this hutch we were able to separate our two does. This was great because the next night our other doe, Hippo, had four kits of her own.
You can see the kits in here at just a day or so old. Each mother had four. We lost Hippo's runt. A few days later we found one of Bigwig's babies strangled in the material that we gave her to make her nest.
Farm life is fertile life. Animals are born and animals die. It is not sad, but it still affects us to see a baby only a few days old lose it's life. Bigwig was distressed when we checked her nest and found the strangled kit. The kit in the above picture is the twin of the one we lost.
Today, the kits are all getting bigger. The above picture is one of Bigwig's kits (left) and one of Hippo's (right) It is amazing the difference a day makes in the size of these baby bunnies. Six total! Unless they are homed by friends the ultimate destination of these rabbits is our plate. This isn't happy nor sad. It isn't cruel. It is a contract. We have allowed our animals to reproduce and the lives that our kits will experience is greater than that of a factory farmed chicken or cow. We will watch our kits grow and love them. Ultimately, they will repay us on our table. Farm life. It is a good way to live.
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