Getting A Taste Of The Lifestyle

It's been a big weekend here. I've spent pretty much all weekend doing "homesteading" type chores, almost without rest. This is a great thing - it's good practice, it gets me outside (burning calories!) and it really gives me a good idea of what I'm in for. The big news is my volunteer day at Heaven Sent Produce, which I'll get to later. I've also spent a great deal of time tending rabbits and working on my own garden. After some weeding, feeding, planting, mulching and a layer of gravel around the perimeter, the garden is really starting to look like something! I've also baked bread, gone to the hardware store, done laundry, bought groceries and, oh yeah...we dispatched the rabbit this morning.

Yep - it's done. Our little lame rabbit's number was up, and first thing this morning, before we could change our minds, we did the deed. I'm not going to get into the details, but I will say this: it is NOT pleasant. It is NOT something you want to do, EVER. It is, however, a necessary step on our path, and for our first time, one that I think we handled well. It was traumatic, but we got over it. I do think that it will get a bit easier with time, but not much. From a purely technical standpoint, there were things that we decided we'd do differently next time, but all in all I think we did a pretty good job.

On a far more pleasant note, I spent all afternoon Saturday at Heaven Sent Produce helping out in the gardens and getting my head stuffed full of knowledge. This was a really great experience, and one that I've already committed to repeat. I spent four solid hours pulling weeds, which may sound like an abuse of my labors, but I can assure you it wasn't. During those four hours I got to meet and talk with some very nice people and I learned more than I've learned in the last six months. Colleen has been very gracious and has offered to teach me whatever I want to learn. She has offered to suit me up and let me help with the beekeeping, and she has invited us to come watch and help when they dress out chickens later this summer. She knows all too well the difficulty of trying to learn things like that from books and drawings, and is happy to save us from the same fate. In turn, I've agreed to provide her with rabbit manure for her gardens, and when our rabbit production is up and running, to teach her how to dress them out.

It's been a very productive weekend and I'm sorry to say that I'm still not quite done. But I expect this is the way my life will be from now on, and then some.