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08 december 2007 november 2007 october 2007 september 2007 august 2007 july 2007 june 2007 may 2007 april 2007 march 2007 february 2007 january 2007 december 2006 november 2006 october 2006 september 2006 august 2006 july 2006 june 2006 may 2006 april 2006 march 2006 blog stats 466 886 hits the more things change posted on december 31 2017 by rob it has been far too long since i have put pen to paper on this blog and an immense amount has changed since those heady days in wisconsin after my long hiatus i am looking to return to this forum and i appreciate any and all of you that continue to check back in or will get an update with this post more to come in the near future i hope but as a teaser let me say that we have moved not just from minnesota where we moved in 2013 from the home and community in wisconsin that provided the fodder for so much of this blog but we have now moved all the way to and this is still insane for me to write to the very doorstep of the jersey shore yes we now live in red bank nj having traded our home in a small rural town 30 miles west of minneapolis to a packed burrough not 6 miles from the atlantic no longer do we look out over my 6 cords of split firewood onto the 30 acres of natural park land to see eagles over the river dialy now we live in a quaint small 110 yr old home on a full shaded postage stamp of a lot would you believe 5000 sq ft including the home and driveway there is no garage for this i paid 2x what we sold our home in mn for and 3x what we paid for our wisco home taxes and utilities are also 2x welcome to jersey i have built a large shed but 3 4 of my stuff is either sold or living with friends and caretakers in mn and wisco thanks drew the grillo is in good hands but 1500 miles away hells i don t even own a wheelbarrow as i said much has changed but i am excited to embrace my malnourished erudite flaneur side am reading like i haven t in years hope to get into some community garden plots and i must say that i am fascinated by the ocean ecology and am working on taking up surfing i am positively awful its good to be back sincerely one straw rob share this share email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading filed under sustainable agriculture leave a comment on hasen a compost bunny posted on june 29 2016 by rob our beloved compost bunny hasen passed this week he lived a rather long and i d like to think rich life for a bunny making it over 7 years with us i d like to take a moment to honor him not only as he was a good little rabbit but also as i feel that his story has merit in its own right hasen and his sister pfeffer joined our family in the spring of 2009 08 on a trip to the u p of michigan to see the waterfalls and enjoy a general basking in the riotous exuberance that is spring in the northwoods as usual we were struck by the general poverty of the area it is a hard climate if you are more than a few dozen miles from lake superior and no major cities for industry and the primary resources logging and some mining being over harvested a century ago but it isn t an impoverished poverty in many cases people get by in the stubborn and inspiring way one often sees at the ragged edges of our modern society as we drove we saw a small farmers market near one of the catchall general stores that have sprung up in the norhtwoods the gas station post office grocery store tackle farm store cafe and we pulled in as i was hoping to channel a bit of money into the local economy bourgeois much and perhaps a pastry for some nibbles plus i had spied some greenwood bent rocking chairs and hoped to bend the ear of the craftsman as i recall we didn t luck out on the pastries but the wood worker was a character and worth the stop however whilst i was talking shop with the woodsman our daughter ella had spied two rabbit kits in a wire cage in the back of a rusty pickup next to some chickens and a duck or two with a prominent hand drawn sign reading somewhat ominously for an almost 6 yr old budding peta activist pet meat rabbit 5 thank the gods they had only 2 left as we packed them into our car 8 hours and at least one night of camping from home mind you i grumbled about the foolishness of little girls and bestowed upon them their tongue in cheek names and worked to justify their rescue ella was beside herself with squees in my mind because being a softie of a man just won t do bunnies need a purpose aha like many aspiring suburban homesteader we have a manure problem suburban town councils seem fit to only allow predacious pets but their manure is not ideal for vege gardens both as it stinks to all hell from their high protein intake and there is a greater risk of disease overlap with humans allegedly chickens were outlawed as of then in our town we with much help from ella s empassioned and well researched speech to the council got a chicken ordinance passed in 2012 right before we moved and bunnies seemed like a good way along with my worm farms to provide concentrated nitrogen and soil microbes for our crops while also turning a bit of our yard wastes rabbits are fair browsers for shrub prunings and devour garden weeds we ve never really bought food for them so it was ok to get the bunnies we needed their poo i can see the wry smile on my wife s face now sure rob you got them for their poo hasen and pfeffer lived in their hutch for several years we thought they were both girls at the time rabbits being somewhat difficult to sex to the noob contributing their services of waste recycling and poo with occasional forays into the yard in a fenced play area with ella and we expiremented with rabbit tractors in the gardens which worked quite well when the babies came we spread the wealth to friends and it is a very special joy to have litters in the house with young kids many many good lessons there pfeffer died at about age three but hasen lived on to move to mn with us in 2013 and entered the next stage of his life with us in our new home we had decided to get chickens our neighbors even had a rooster in their flock and at the end of our block was a legacy farm still in the township but surrounded by actual town that bred mules we often were greeted by the loud braying of their jack donkey so i converted a 8 10 plastic shed that we had inherited with the house to a chicken coop ok i put straw in the bottom nailed some large sticks together for a roost and made laying boxes out of 5 gallon buckets i didn t really want to keep hasen in the house indoor non litter trained rabbits are rather well odiferous due to their urine and i didn t really want to build a new outdoor hutch necessity is the mother of invention so is laziness and now that i thought about it i didn t see much difference between the structure needs of chickens and the needs of bunnies so i threw hasen in with the pullets and made sure to put fresh greens or alfalfa hay in daily just like with his hutch hasen did well with the chickens they harassed him a bit as he didn t fair too well in the pecking order due to a decided lack of a beak but every spring he returned the harassment as he persistently tried to breed them all which gave some different lessons to the kids not gonna lie i m still a bit upset we never got any chocolate creme filled eggs out of the deal in that first summer i added a composting chicken run post coming soon to the coop essentially a 10 12 roofed and screened area to expand the confined habitat for the chookens to 40 sq ft total per bird hasen had full access to everywhere the ckickens went and while he rapidly began to switch to a more normal cerpuscular nocturnal activity cycle he would awaken rapidly to butt the chickens out of the way when the fresh greens were dropped in some interesting synergies became apparent as i observed the hutch over time first of all unlike chickens as rabbits have a true urine and a very nitrogen rich one at that the bedding began to compost much faster than with just the 5 pullets in residence i had the lot on a 6 12 deep litter method and the sections under hasen s toilet corners were super rich compost and as the coop had an impervious plastic barrier floor the bottom 2 3 of the litter would stay moist enough to cool compost normally and i even ended up incorporating worms and they thrived as they stayed in the low moist area and the chickens rarely scratched that deep through the dry top bedding another very interesting synergy became apparent rabbits have two kinds of poop the first is a pellet that is only half done these are often dropped in dens for later consumption especially when the rabbit is eating high lignin forage and or food is scarce similar to a cow chewing its cud this allows the bunny in question to extract far more nutrient than a simple once through system it didn t take long at all for the chickens to figure out that hasen was basically a hopping treat dispenser they absolutely adored the first poops which opened up some interesting function stacking to me essentially co housing rabbits and chickens allowed me to feed chickens brush albeit indirectly as hasen would devour the dogwood willow maple trimmings and the chickens would then eat the half digested pellets didn t see that one coming but it really does work after a year or so into the co housing project i can home late one evening to find hasen out in the front lawn in the moonlight happily munching clover and dandelions he did his happy bunny jump turn flip when i approached him incorrectly thinking i need to catch him to keep him safe to my surprise he calmly hopped back to the coop in the side yard and into a hole behind it it seems that he had dug a hole under the foundation of the chicken coop from the run and had begun going out on nightly adventures here is where some of my risky contrariness reared its head i know damn well that living as close as we do to a river that is full of weasel otter raccoon possum fox and the rest of the chicken rabbit eating menagerie that i should plug that hole and keep them all safe but i didn t seeing hasen that happy and the thought of that little meat bunny sneaking out each night to romp in the suburbs under the moonlight brought just too much joy to me i talked it over with the kids and we all agreed that hasen who was 6 at the time had lived a very long bunny life and that it was better to let him have his adventures even knowing that the great horned owls we hear weekly would likely get him in time so we let him play and either through luck or pluck no weasels followed him into the coop nor did any owls turn him into baby food in the spring sure we were lucky but it was also a calculated risk and i am not one to live my life in fear preferring to live fully than live afraid and hasen seemed to me to share that sentiment the chickens well putting them at risk was likely too far but we have been fine it was not uncommon to see sagely old hasen sitting and just be ing at night or early morning in winter it became apparent from the tracks that he had been making friends with local bunnies though we haven t seen any wild domestic crosses yet that would ve make me very happy indeed if we had had our own watership down at the end of our second summer here hasen developed a lame hind leg i was not able to find a direct injury but i suspect that he had had an adventure that was more exciting than typical causing some nerve damage or perhaps he got arthritis over time it crept to his other hind leg though he retained use of that one to some degree until the end we expected last winter to be his last but lame and all he soldiered through the 30 nights in the coop and met his 8th spring this year he didn t venture out as much at night but would follow the chickens out into the lawn when we would let them range either freely or into their fenced rotating pastures once the gardens were up he was definitely moving slower but his weight was good and he could scoot pretty well on his own we d find him just basking in the sun nearly covered in white dutch clover half asleep and seemingly quite content the chickens seemed to sense the change and almost never pestered him any more and they would share space at the greens pile daily or walk calmly around him in the pasture this june hasen began to turn his weight began to drop and he stopped cleaning his hind feet which would get dirty from all the dragging and over the past 2 weeks he would often be found with stems of greens wound around his legs we began cutting all greens we fed to the coop but the end was near last night hasen left us but i learned a lot from that silly little meat rabbit and am better for having him he was a good little composting bunny seeing him eyes half closed basking in clover and the late spring sun never failed to remind me to just be thanks hasen may your moonlit adventures continue in the valhalla of bunnies rob share this share email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading filed under sustainable agriculture 3 comments hold the ramparts posted on june 29 2016 by rob the passing of gene logsdon last month hit me hard it was so sudden so out of the blue that its impact was raw and hot especially as my wife and i were experiencing the pending loss of her mother to cancer at the same time gene to me like so many of us was a proxy grandfather spinning yarns of past days chocked full of practical wisdom mores and humour i am working my way through my gene logsdon shelf of my library and looking forward to filling in some holes there as well this morning i picked up the contrary farmer and was instantly reminded of why i love gene so much we are circumspect about our economic institutions we do not bank on paper money within marble walls but invest in sun and soil and sweat and the tools that make sweat more productive i think of us as the rampart people in all ages we have camped on the edges of the earth the buffer between our more conventional and timid brethren and those nether regions where as the medieval maps instructed there be dragons and wild beestes it is our destiny to draw the dragon s view while the mainstream culture hides behind its disintegrating deficit and ramen us for shattering its complacency so be it gene started his farm when he was 42 i think that it is not overly coincidental that i happen to be turning 42 next week and i find that inspiring also challenging it is easy to see gene as a grandfather but gene is also the ben kenobi of sustainable agriculture and he will continue on more powerful than we can possibly imagine i see his ghost smiling at me as i sharpen my restored hatchet when i pause in my compost turning to watch a bluebird hunt the garden or his giving me a hard time w...