Valentine's Day
February 14, 2011
Valentine’s Day came and went here today with some, but not a lot, of fanfare.
Farm life is in some ways very liberating, because we pick and choose the business activities that we get involved in. But once we make those choices, we are tied to the requirements of those activities regardless of whatever else is going on. In the case of livestock ownership, there are chores to be done, pregnant or young animals to be tended and all sorts of related tasks which don’t give us the day off unless we hire someone to do the work for us. With greenhouses and field crops, those plants have to be watered, weeded, fertilized and other tasks which also sometimes can’t wait. That means holidays come and go and we still have work to do.
Some look at that as a reason to not pursue this life. After all, if an office job can take the day off, but farmers can’t, then the office job would seem the better choice for quality of life reasons alone. Others see farm life as a way to celebrate all of life’s moments in a setting we already enjoy. Holidays on the farm can be as memorable as anywhere else. Some have gone so far as to turn holidays in to a profitable farm enterprise. Others, us included, choose to celebrate holidays quietly, in this place we have hand crafted and brought to life.
Our day today was spent basically the same way most days are spent, with The Husband at his off-farm job and me working here. But about midway through the day, that delivery truck drove up with a gift I get every year but always manage to forget about until it arrives - the bouquet of nice flowers. A gift to put in the windowsill and look at for days to come, to remind us both of this holiday and what it stands for.
Dinner was brief tonight as usual, with chores going until 9pm, bedtime fast approaching, and both of us much too tired from our day to want to go anywhere. And that 5am alarm clock will be going off tomorrow just like any other workday. So our Valentine’s Day evening was spent simply enjoying a quiet evening together, here on our little piece of ground, far from the madding crowds. But we did give ourselves something that we and everyone else we know, never seems to have enough of. Namely, some quality time. I started chores early so I could finish early, and I had done the several-times-a-week tasks earlier so that I wouldn’t have any of them to do tonight. We can’t get away from our daily tasks but we can sometimes juggle things a bit to make room for what matters. So I’ll keep this blog entry short tonight too, all so that we can enjoy the holiday just a little bit more, here on the farm.
Our Successful Farming and Ranching Books
We released our very first self-published book. The Chicken Coop Manual in 2014. It is a full color guide to conventional and alternative poultry housing options, including 8 conventional stud construction plans, 12 alternative housing methods, and almost 20 different design features. This book is available on Amazon.com and as a PDF download. Please visit The Chicken Coop Manual page for more information.
Rabbit Colonies: Lessons Learned
We started with rabbits in 2002, and we've been experimenting with colony management ever since. Fast forward to 2017, when I decided to write another book, this time about colony management. The book is chock-full of practical information, and is available from both Amazon and as a PDF download. Please visit the Rabbit Colonies page for more information.
The Pastured Pig Handbook
We are currently working on our next self-published book: The Pastured Pig Handbook. This particular book addresses a profitable, popular and successful hog management approach which sadly is not yet well documented. Our handbook, will cover all the various issues involved with pastured hog management, including case studies of numerous current pastured pig operations. If you have any questions about this book, please Contact Us.
Weblog Archives
We published a farm blog between January 2011 and April 2012. We reluctantly ceased writing them due to time constraints, and we hope to begin writing them again someday. In the meantime, we offer a Weblog Archive so that readers can access past blog articles at any time.
If and when we return to writing blogs, we'll post that news here. Until then, happy reading!