Superabundance!

Mark Bittman wrote a fabulous piece for the New York Times yesterday titled “Celebrate the Farmer!”  Like always, he was right on point.  The article argues that the effort that goes into growing food far outweighs the energy expended in cooking it.  Furthermore, it talks about focusing more on small farms to feed our desperately mal-nourished yet over-fed country.

Today for lunch I made Rabbit Biryani with one of our own.  In fact everything in it was our own besides the spices and the butter and the rice.  The Bunny Slayer strikes again.  I felt like quite the savage cutting up the animal into pieces.  It requires more force than actually killing the critter.  Raising your own meat and then enjoying is a pure joy through and through.  The killing it part isn’t so great, but like everything it has its place. 

This morning was spent weeding and tying up the tomatoes.  The farm is bountiful this time of year and every twenty minutes or so I would take a break from stooping over and pulling weeds to munch on a ground cherry or Sungold tomato.  Freakin’ yum.

What else is new?  I am feeling very ambitious after a full 8 hours of glorious sleep today.  It’s amazing how much sleep affects my mood.  In addition to a full day of work and making a rabbit for lunch this evening I plan on swimming a mile and milking the goats.  Yesterday I felt like a lazy lump of flesh.  I blame it on sleep.  Luckily, no matter what mood you’re in there is always a job to do.  For the lazy farmer (which we all are at some point or another), there are plenty of sitting jobs and for the more ambitious one (like our WWOOFer, Udi who works harder than any of the paid employees it seems) there is plenty of good old-fashioned physical labor.

Our (rabbit) does have gotten a lot bigger in the last month and I have been feeding them with the endless supply of blackberry leaves (berries are finally ripe which means it's pie time—freakin’ yuuuum).  The ducks are a gang of neurotic teenagers and the chickens are possessed.  The squarsh are enormous and juicy and there is an endless supply of basil and spicy peppers. I’m a happy girl.