Ups and downs and wascally wabbits

While I encourage you to read this post all the way through, allow me to begin by not sugar coating things. 2021 has generally sucked so far. As far as the homestead goes it has seemed like one step forward and three steps back. Between seemingly endless labor hours and many thousands of dollars put into infrastructure projects just to get back to the status quo from the end of last year, to seeds not germinating, to endless weeds sprouting up everywhere despite thousands of square feet of high end ground cover cloth, to late starting and poorly producing plants, to months of consistently under-performing microgreens, to multiple appliance failures and replacements, to supply chain issues preventing us from getting the things we need to keep things running consistently, and so on, it has been a pretty consistently disappointing and demoralizing year so far.

Now that things are finally starting to look like we might get things up and running in something resembling a reasonably productive fashion again, the rabbits have decided to make a contribution to the process. I will admit that in the grand scheme of things this is not a major issue at all. Insert proverb regarding straws and camels here. Radishes are one of the few things I feel like we can count on in life. And yet a pair of diabolical little lagamorphs have managed to eat the tops off of nearly a quarter of our entire radish patch in the space of a week or two at a time when we have (relatively) little to nothing available to bring to market. I have considered a variety of violent solutions that may or may not violate city ordinances, and even briefly thought about adding hundreds of feet of fencing to keep the wee buggers out (but given the ridiculous cost of basically everything right now that's just a bad joke to even consider).

As someone wiser than I has said "It really do be like that sometimes". This is one of those moments where I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself that we are by no means in control of this process, and how much we enjoy it is largely a matter of perspective. We just have to ride the wave where it takes us day by day, appreciate the beauty and wonder as and when they're offered, and focus on building for the long term. Yes it sucks to work as hard as we do and have so little to show for it at the moment, but the days and years are going to pass whatever we do. I'd much prefer to be working toward a future including a measure of self sufficiency and perhaps even something approaching abundance someday than revert to passive dependent consumer status. This is the process we have signed up for, and while the lows can be awfully low sometimes, I feel reasonably assured that there will be better times ahead that are absolutely worth working toward. In any case we are testing the boundaries of what we and our little patch of land are capable of, and that inevitably involves some growing pains. Honestly I wouldn't have it any other way.

Go farm a lawn,

Spencer