The last two days have been a much needed break from the rain and enclosure we’ve experienced so much this season.  The girls have played on our back porch, which they love to do.  John cut our grass that had shot up with all the rain.  I worked the garden, and I have to say I finally have some faith that it might produce something for us.  It has been helpful to be outside as my mind has become kind of sluggish with all the thinking I’ve been doing.  I exercised outside today.  I love the smell of cool moist mountains.  It still didn’t give my mind a jump start and make me come back and produce a ton of words on my novel, but it gave me a change of pace.

We’ve been thinking so much about food and the way we are living our lives lately, and I’ve been nervous about the future of our food situation.  Things are seeming to fall into place though.  A lady gave my mom (a rural postmaster who gets many gifts of food) a dozen fresh eggs from her hens, which my mother in turn gave to me.  It may be a possible source for cheap eggs in the future.  I may get by on only buying 3 cartons of eggs this month.  A neighbor has some doodles (baby chicks) they are raising until they are ready for a new home, and then they are ours.  We are going to have to prepare the coop soon.  Then, it will be fresh eggs and happy hens.

Today, my husband staked off the garden to get ready to hang the pie pans that will hopefully deter the little critters (That and our dog has decided that defecating around the garden is a great idea.  I stuck the hoe in it twice yesterday.  Maybe the smell will help keep animals away.).  John also built a scarecrow and let Deladis help.  She drew its face.  A scowling one.  Yesterday, I was able to plant two more rows of corn.  We have potatoes, onions, cabbage and corn sprouted and doing well.  I have 3 rows of carrots planted and I have no idea how to identify their sprouts from weeds. :%    I hope they have sprouted.  I’m going to wait a little while before I replant those rows.  We’re going to finish this week out with rain, so I’ll have to wait until after that.

My brother killed a wild turkey on the last day of Kentucky’s season for hunting them, and gave us the meat.  It was so delicious!  He came to eat some, and offered to give me his domestic rabbits to raise and breed as a food source.  I’m still trying to figure out how I’ll feel about that.  Will I be able to feed a creature, look after it’s wellbeing, watch it give birth and nurse young, then kill it and eat it?  How would I explain it to the girls?  I’ve never kept an animal for the purpose of slaughtering it.  At least with hunting the animal has a fighting chance.  If it out smarts you, it gets to live.  Until the minute it dies it has lived the life it was meant to live.  The domestic rabbits would be a good source of fresh healthy meat for the family.  It is something I’m really going to consider.

I’m going to be looking into composting as well.  I don’t think the ground will need much help this year to produce a good crop, but maybe in the future.  I’ll have to have containers for it because any of the food we throw out gets eaten by either our dog or wild animals.  Not much of a compost pile when there is nothing there to rot.

With a garden, laying hens, and rabbits, we won’t have too much more to worry about buying from the grocery stores, and we would cut back on waste as well.  It is so wonderful to have land to work.  It’s meaningful, joyful work.  I think we might be on our way to sustainability.