The Only True Constant

When I was in college, I took a conceptual physics class.  It was required.  I did not do so voluntarily although I was relieved to learn that there was not a lot of math involved.  I do love science.  Physics is just a bit of a reach for me.  Many days and nights were spent sitting in a coffee shop with my husband trying to bend our brains around the latest thought experiment.  But, I remember the one thing that my professor jammed into my resistant mind:

There are these things that are considered mathematical constants.   We talked about the speed of light ad nauseum.  However, the only real constant in the universe is change.  The irony of that resonated with me then.  It still does today.

Look at those carrots!

I've changed jobs again.  This may come as no surprise to most.  In the beginning, the work at the sand mine was interesting and challenging. After a few months, it became unfulfilling, repetitive, and depressing.  The people there were, and presumably still are, unhappy and unmotivated and singularly unkind to one another.  It isn't the place for me.  I gave it eight months.  The final straw came when I nearly suffered frostbite one very cold December day working in the load out bay.  Think about that for a minute:  I nearly got frostbite for fracking sand.  

Enough is enough.

Sunrise at the sand mine...might have been sunset.  I can't remember now...

Now I've taken a job at a meat processing facility for a rather large company.  We make ready-to-eat foods.  My job is in Food Safety and Quality Assurance.  I monitor for environmental issues.  I perform equipment inspections.  I do GMP audits.  It is my job to monitor the food we produce and help to ensure it is safe from contaminants. There are those who would argue that the 'food' we make is not something that people ought to eat on a regular basis.  I will agree without hesitation that hot dogs and frozen pizza are not exactly prime cuisine.  But, the fact remains that people feed this stuff to their kids.  They should at least be able to do so without worrying that it might infect them with something awful. 

Look at that dinker!

Fundamentally, my work is satisfying in that I feel I am performing a function that society as a whole needs.  Ensuring the safety of the food web is an important component of feeding the general population any way you look at it.  In a perfect world, everyone would eat wholesome food that is locally grown and very fresh...they would know the face and the name of the person who grew it.  In the real world, people eat what they like and can afford.  For many it is hot dogs and frozen pizza.

The work that I do for money has strengthened my resolve to continue the other work that I do: raising lean rabbit meat, growing organic vegetables, and producing handmade bath items for the whole family.  I am stepping back into the role of entrepreneur and stocking up on fresh batches of soap.

One of my seasonal soaps called Mother's Day.  It has a floral bouquet fragrance.

All of this has lead me more or less full circle back to where I know I need to be.  The constant of change has lead me to learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I don't know who made this meme.  But, I love it.

It all comes down to balance.  Balance is the thing I've been searching and striving to find for years.  Maybe some day, I'll get it right.  Until then, I'll be gardening.

So, anyway....

Yeah.  It's been a while.  My new job got me busy and a lot of things got away from me.  I'm not selling at the market store anymore.  I've decided to step back from some of the plans I had in order to make good on some promises I made to myself.  Chief among those was to simplify my life.

Simplify?  Oh how naive can a grown woman be?  In this day and age, simplifying is just not possible.

I'm not producing for sale on purpose anymore.  But, I am still working towards subsistence, self-sufficiency, and sustainability for my own home and life.  We have quite a pantry going.  The rabbits are adorable and productive.  We are planning a coop of hens for eggs next year.

Oh...speaking of rabbits, in June we bred Jane Doe.  She had a litter of seven.  These are the two that survived to leave the nest box:

Right out of the nest box.

Also right out of the nest box.

They were the cutest things ever!  They grew up fast and were due to be sent to freezer camp in September.  But, things got a little hairy.  (hee!)

I have long been of the belief that solid application of my personal animal husbandry motto, "First they are cute; then they are tasty", was absolutely required in all instances of meat rabbit breeding.  Face it: all animals are born cute so their own parents don't kill them.  They are cute just long enough to get old enough to take care of themselves.

WAY too cute to eat just yet.

Very close to the 12 week window and a very proper tasty size of five pounds and no longer nearly as cute.

So you can see for yourself that rabbits follow the cute-then-tasty plan as expected.  But, for me, they re-enter the cute stage at a certain point.  That stage starts, apparently, sometime near 20 weeks of age.

Guess how old those little bunnies are right now? 

Yep. *sigh*

We went out there with murderous intention.  We wanted rabbit in the freezer and we were bound to have it!  Except the young'uns out there have taken on the cuteness that their parents had when we first got them and brought them home.  The white one in particular has captured my heart.  We have been unable to bring ourselves to do the deed.  We waited too long.

Now it's too late.  Far too late.  So late, in fact, that they now have names.  The deed is undone.  We are attached.

Meet Grace and Janet.  Grace is the white rabbit (get it?  Grace Slick...White Rabbit...har) and Janet is the black rabbit (she has the one white foot sorta like Michael Jackson's one white glove, except she's a girl, so Janet).

Janet?  With one blue named Janis and the other named Jane, naming another doe 'Janet' isn't confusing AT ALL

Utter lunacy.

Running on Empty

This week has been a rough week here at The Slice.  The mower broke the drive belt, the truck broke something we haven't identified yet, and I've busted my ass all week at the home doing good works.  It's a tough old life.

Today I was off from the day job and I spent my day in a funk.  I was missing my Mom, missing my farm, and missing my freedom from before I took this job.  I was in a deep blue funk.

I should have seen this coming.  After all, it's August.  Usually by now I've either been to Colorado or I'm preparing to go see my Mom.  I have done neither this year and I don't plan to.  It kinda hit me this morning that I won't ever be planning to visit her again.

A deep, dark blue funk.

After I got done with my errands for the day, I cried in the car all the way home.  Then I cried to my husband.  Then I cried to my best friend.  Then I remembered the rabbits needed feeding and cleaning up after.

So I went to the farm and cried to my rabbits.  They were fairly indifferent to my tears as I expected.  I took the big metal pans from their cages and started cleaning them.  When I put them back, I noticed Gordon was nibbling on the weeds that were poking up through the bottom of his hutch.  It was enchanting and I left him until last to put his tray back so he could nibble some more.  In fact, I went and got some more weeds and gave them to the ladybuns so they could nibble delicately at some greenery.

With that task behind me and dusk fast approaching, I decided to do something about the general tallness of all the plant life in the 'lawn' at the farm.  I hauled all 400 feet of garden hose up to the hose racks and wound them up off the ground.  Then, I cranked up the Little Red Mower That Could and I mowed the damned bitch of a Ditch.

Have I ever blogged about the ditch?  Maybe not.  Our Ditch (I think of it as a proper noun because it's a proper bitch) is about half a block long with steep sides and a rather bumpity bottom.  For some reason the 'grass' on the bottom is pretty sparse but the 'grass' on the steep sides grows luxuriantly. Of course.  The part that is hard to mow needs mowing the most.  It's like some kind of twisted corollary to Murphy's Law...inverse relationship between 'grass' and grade?


I know, I know:  Nerd!

It's not a good picture, but that's the Ditch.  Really, it's worse than it seems.  I'll have to try for a better shot than Google street view can provide.

Anyway, I mowed that bitch and the front yard to boot.  Just as the sun started to slip beneath the horizon, the Little Red Mower That Could started running on fumes. I put the mower away and looked at what I'd accomplished.  The mowing is only about 1/5 done.  But, it's a start.

When I got back in my car, I was humming a little tune.  I forget which one because it suddenly occurred to me that I was humming a tune.  Humming.  Like I was...happy or something. 

Then I had a thought.

I spent a lot of time this week inside.  Up until a month or so ago, I was spending upwards of 10-12 hours a day outdoors in the garden or doing something outside.  Now I'm down to an hour or less some days.  I've always been the happiest working outside.  It recharges me in a way nothing else ever has.  You might say that like the mower I was running on empty.  Sometimes when my energy is that low I forget how to fix it.  It's really as simple as mowing the darn bitch of a ditch...or anything else requiring physical exertion. 

Exercise is the best anti-depressant out there.

But don't tell my husband that.  Sheesh.  He'll never mow it again!

They Have To Eat, Too

This is just a nice volunteer sunflower.  Nothing to do with the post, really.

Last night while sitting eating my 'lunch' at what I've come to regard as my night and day job, I was thinking about what to plant as my fall crop this year.  I don't have a lot of luck with fall crops.  Either I plant too late or it gets too dry or the frost comes too soon or not soon enough.  But I was reading about growing carrots as a fall crop, so I decided to give that go.  I haven't tried that yet.  As a bonus, I happen to have leftover carrot seeds.

So, I'm out in my garden in back of my house digging up what is left of the carrots I planted last spring. I planted a rather long variety and I've pulled a few that were well over 10 inches long. They are some very nice carrots. I had to literally dig some of them out of the ground lest they break off and cause the prolific swearing and subsequent stabbing of the earth with my little garden trowel in frustration.

What can I say?  The sweat was in my eyes.

So I get the last carrot pulled finally!  I'm sitting on the edge of the bed breaking off the carrot greens and dropping them on the bed for mulch when some movement catches the corner of my eye. I look more closely. To my surprise, and horror, here is a baby bunny digging its way up out of the soil.

Gulp.

Right where I was digging mere moments before. Right where I could have ended his hippity-hoppity life with my little garden trowel.

Double gulp.

I decided to poke around a little, with my hands this time, because you KNOW baby bunnies don't come in singles.  I promptly unearth three more.*

That's when I threw up in my mouth a little and eased the wanderer back into the nest with his siblings before I could find any more or any potential carnage.

Now I know what you're thinking. Why am I not freaking out about a cottontail nest in the middle of my carrot patch?

It's the irony. It seems so appropriate to find rabbits in a carrot patch that I can't complain at all. After all, who of my generation can forget the Saturday morning images of Bugs Bunny tunneling under a carrot farm and popping up in a carotene-induced stupor wondering if he should have turned left at Albuquerque?

I expect Momma Cottontail will move those babes lickety split in the night once she realizes they've been found.**

Unlike some gardeners, I don't mind sharing some of my bounty with the wildlife. I don't like that the birds ate so many of my apples. But in a few years, I'll have more apples than I know what to do with.  It's part of the web of life. Besides, they don't understand our arbitrary boundaries.

Not to mention the fact that they have to eat, too. 

*I took my husband out to view the tiny dinkers and we found a fifth bunny.  All carrot replanting operations are on hold for the moment.

**Update 31 July 2016:  Nope.  They're still there.  And we have a wicked rain storm approaching.  Why am I worried about them?  Yes.  I covered them up with some discarded carrot tops.  Hopeless.  I am hopeless.

Smitten!

There is exciting news from Picofarms today.  Well, I think it's exciting anyway:

Rabbits.  More specifically, meat rabbits.  Holy buckets!  We have livestock!

Today, we trekked across the state braving roads both paved and unpaved to a tiny town called Palmer.  There, we found a lovely woman and a whole lotta rabbits.

They were all absolutely adorable.  But we limited our selection to two does and one buck.  Here they are making their interwebz debut!  True to form and following our own weird tradition, the rabbits have unique and oddly satisfying punny names.

This is Janis. Janis Hoplin.

This is our buck, Gordon Whitefoot...for obvious reasons.

We call this little girl Jane Doe.  We call her that because she just would not tell us her real name.

All of our rabbits are littermates and they were born in February of this year making just about 4 months old.  They were produced by crossing a Harlequin female with a male black New Zealand.  Both of the does look grey, but they are actually called 'blue'.  The male is black except for that one white foot thing.

I am smitten.  We plan to wait until next spring to start the breeding program. They're a bit young right now and we don't want to worry about bunnies in the winter time.

Next:  what to name the rabbitry.  So far, I've come up with House of Blues.  It's okay for a working title.

A Walk on the Wild Side

If you've read my blog at all, you probably know that I spend a considerable amount of time in my car driving to and from work.  I pretty much whine and harp on it every chance I get.  But it's not all bad.

Most of my drive time is spent at one or the other, and sometimes both, twilight times every week day.  Pretty much year around the morning drive is conducted at least part way in the grey of early morning. During the late fall to late winter time frame I get darkness and/or twilight both coming and going.  My Dad and my husband have admonished me countless times on the dangers of driving on Nebraska highways during these times because of the opportunities to encounter our native wildlife.

Mule deer in Rocky Mountain National Park

What they're getting at is my chances of hitting a deer while traveling at highway speeds is somewhat enhanced during the time of day when visibility is limited.  Of course they're right.  But there is a compelling reason to be out and about especially at those particular times.

Every single day, without fail, I see one or more natural wonders on my drive.  In the mornings, I am most likely to see deer as they leave their beds and begin for forage for food.  Just this morning I watched a lone deer standing in a light fog on what used to be a corn field delighting in what the harvester left behind on the ground.  There must have been a PILE of corn there judging from the way it was chomping and glancing around nervously then chomping again.  I almost ran myself off the road watching it enjoy the corn.

Photo Credit:
Henry Zeman/NWTF

It is also not uncommon for me to see wild turkeys.  I've spent this summer watching a particular group raise their poults to fledglings and beyond.  Usually, I see them grazing quite close to the edge of the highway shoulder just outside the tall grass in the ditch.  I say grazing because I see them snooping around in the grass and eating something.  Insects?  Tasty green shoots?  I don't know what wild turkeys eat.  A couple of weeks ago, I saw a flock that was at least 50 strong.  It was a stunning sight.

I have seen rabbits, raccoons, opossums, domestic cats and the occasional badger or coyote.  I also see birds of prey like red-tailed hawks, Swainson's hawks, American kestrels and once I got up close and personal with a huge owl that flew about 10 feet in front of my car as I drove home late one Saturday night after a dance party.  I didn't stop to ask him about his heritage so I couldn't tell you what kind he was...or that he could have been a she.  How should I know?

When a llama puts its ears down, it's warning you to back off.

Living in this part of the world, I almost have to see animals everywhere I go.  Cattle and horses are kept on nearly every farm.  Just about five blocks from my house is a small farm where they keep llamas.  I look for ducks every time I pass by.  I can't help it.

But without a doubt, my favorite time of year for wildlife watching is the early spring.  Every year, at least once, I pass over the crest of a hill on the highway somewhere and I am rewarded with a fabulous view of an enormous flock of migrating fowl either flapping along overhead or pausing to rest and forage for snacks on a dormant corn field.  Snow geese really do look like drifts of snow from far away.  Really, really. It's pretty cool.  Other than the geese, the best part of spring is the crane migration.

The Central Flyway of the US goes right over top of central Nebraska.  My little town is on the eastern edge of that flyway.  We see a lot of birds here.  But, as you travel west along Interstate 80, the number of cranes, like the sandhill crane, goes up almost exponentially.

Sometimes my friends from other parts of the world will ask me what it is that keeps me here.  There are no major metropolitan areas nearby.  There are no popular professional sports teams to speak of.  There are no celebrity hang-outs even close.  Maybe those are some of my reasons.

I know what makes me happy.

I love the land.  I love the animals both wild and domestic.  Nothing makes me happier than to see a herd of cattle grazing in contentment on a field of corn stubble or to watch the youngsters kicking up their heels in the midst of a herd of cows.  Well, nothing except maybe a flock of chickens on the green, spring grass...especially a flock of white Silkies.  But that's another blog post.