This morning we woke before sunrise and dispatched Sal's litter. We let them run around freely in the cool morning air for a while before we thanked them and harvested their bodies. They were beautiful creatures and they met their end at the hands of the people who loved and valued them. I'm happy to report that everything went swiftly and smoothly and now my freezer is full. I'll spare everyone the details and pictures. It was a pretty personal experience, raising an animal from a baby and then converting it into food...one I think any meat-eater should experience for themselves. I look forward to honoring them in the kitchen.

After we cleaned up, we had drinks nearby and toasted to their little spirits.

(Tequila Sunrises in honor of the rabbits.)

The rest of the gang will be moved upstate this week for a few months while I work out plans to move to a new farm nearby. This is big news. I'll have space to grow food on a larger scale. I'll be able to raise goats and pigs and a larger flock of hens in addition to rabbits. I'll still be close enough to the city to continue teaching classes weekly. Actually, I should get into the habit of saying "we" because Neil, my devoted boyfriend, will be participating in this endeavor as well. He's been a tremendous support and we'll be taking this voyage together. We will be farmers. It is what I've always wanted and now it's happening.

<3m

Yesterday I got some bad news from one of my landlords. I should preface this by stating that I have one wonderful, responsible landlord and one not so nice, kind of irrational one...I've posted about friction in the house of late but now it's come to a head. Their partnership is dissolving and now I have to move the backyard farm.

At first news of this, I panicked. This has become my life and I am not certain how I will adjust to not having access to a space to grow food and raise critters to feed myself with. And then it dawned on me...I've simply outgrown being here. While I certainly don't think I deserve to be the target of anyone's anger, I do see how my lifestyle might rub people the wrong way. It marks me with a rather large bullseye. My interests are not meant to anger anyone, but I can't much help what other people think or feel about it. I thought I was doing the best I could to be considerate, tidy and self-aware but it may not have been enough. And so it is. I have to clear the farm stuff out.

I'm moving my rabbits over to Dara's place temporarily. They will live in the hollowed out carriage house in her backyard in Bed Stuy. I've got to cull Salad's offspring this weekend. I'm simultaneously filled with dread and anxious to see the job done. They've been getting free outdoor time daily and seem happy and I've been enjoying my time with them. Even so, the time as come. I may just sell off Hazel's litter because I just don't know where I'll be able to cull them once they are of age. I've had kind offers from folks upstate to host such an event but money is extremely tight right now and I can't afford the gas and tolls for such a trip.

The chickens are staying put for now. The bees will be moved to Brooklyn Navy Yard in the Spring where they will be part of Brooklyn Grange's new bee yard. It'll be a good place for them because I can pester Tim to check in on them every so often.

As far as the gardening is concerned....I'm not sure if it's worth trying to plant at all this Spring. Maybe just a ton of early crops. Radishes, greens, peas...

I'll be able to get my hands really dirty with the ladies at Domestic Construction this Spring and Summer. I've signed on to help them get Design Plot, their urban garden, up and running. They are really inspiring ladies so I'm so completely stoked that I get to work with them on this. I've got a post coming up on a truly awesome project involving me, the Grange folk and Domestic Construction...Stay tuned for that!

Anyway, I'm certainly sad that things are ending on a sour note here at Jewel Street, but I've been sensing the end drawing close for some time now. I've been planning and scheming. I've got a project on the wings for later this summer, into 2013 which would afford me space, freedom, and some quiet all within reach of the city I've grown to love. I'll be able to bring my critter kingdom back together under one canopy of trees overlooking the shore. It's going to be beautiful and inspiring and I cannot wait to share it with you all. Once I've got all of that settled and confirmed, I'll spill all of the beans about it.

With that, I hope that you all continue to follow me on my journey. I'll still be teaching classes and working with other folks on their projects. Things will be different, but not much so. This is not the end. Just a little bump in the road. I've been fortunate to be cruising for as long as I had been.

<3m

...and I suspect my cats ate it. But it doesn't make it any less remarkable to me.

This summer I came back to Brooklyn from a week in the Catskills and found a weird little poop like mass in my travel bag. At first I was startled by it and thought an animal had left a happy little surprise in my bag, but it started wiggling around slightly, jolting me to my senses. It was some sort of insect in a pupal stage.

Not knowing what to do with it and not wanting to kill it, i buried it in the soil of one of my house plants and forgot about it.

Several months later (last night) I hear a rustling in the dried leaves that I use to mulch the soil of my plants. I looked closer and saw this:

It's a newly emerged Whited-line Sphinx Moth ...a type of Hummingbird moth, known for it's ability to hover while it feeds from flowers. It's also the adult form of a hornworm, which many gardeners detest due to their voracious apetite and ability to do some real damage to solanaceous crops like tomatoes and eggplant and tobacco.

Being as it's still winter and this critter would no doubt freeze to death, I just let it rest on a hanging plant and hoped my cats would take no notice of it. If it was still there in the am, I'd feed it some nectar and try to drop it of at the American Museum of Natural History where I have a friend that works in the Entomology department. That would have been the best I could do.

There's still a chance that the moth is hiding out somewhere in my apartment I'll be glad to see it, but I feel really fortunate that I was able to witness part of the lifecycle of such a beautiful creature in any case.

Insects are just so damned remarkable! Check out this video of a White-lined Sphinx in action!

Last night like a sneaky sneak, I crept into the coop and scooped up poor Buddy who was roosting with her flock mates. I pushed her fluffy bottom into a cat carrier and carted her to Bushwick. We had a class to teach, she and I. We were headed to 3rd Ward to teach Brooklynites about the joys of being a city chickener! She's our best hen. The most easily handled and with the cutest darned face so she's been sort of elected as the mayor of chicken town around these parts.

(Budrick is a Mac gal)

The class, surprisingly, was full and everyone was thrilled to be able to pet a real live chicken. Buddy was perched on the back of some stacked chairs trying as hard as she could to stay awake under the industrial lighting during my presentation but toward the end of the 3 hour class she was pretty well pooped.

Then Isaac, one of the dudes at 3rd Ward came in and played her a little song on his flute. She perked up a bit but the jury is out on whether or not she had an opinion of it either way. The gesture was nice though.

I stuck around and talked to some of the students afterwards and as a result, we didn't get home until after 10 p.m. Easily 4 hours after her bedtime. I carried her back home and tucked her in the coop to cuddle with her pals. This morning everything was back to normal, though Buddy seemed to be sporting a bit of a hangover from all of the excitement. The life of a chicken superstar!

If you are interested in learning about chickens, bees or food preservation or plenty of other DIY-related skills check out some of the classes 3rd Ward offers!

There's always a favorite...one you want to spare. This one was mine and now she has a family in Brooklyn to look after her. She'll be paying for her room and board in manure for their garden.

Neil and I dropped off one of Salad and Ghost's offspring this afternoon after my beekeeping webinar. Dara from With Love, From Brooklyn took this little gal after she and her three beautiful daughters came by to meet all of the rabbits a few weeks back.

We taught Eva, the oldest of the three, how to pick up the rabbit and hold her properly, how and what to feed her and how to trim her nails. She took to handling Artemis like she had been wrangling rabbits for ages, even coaxing the rabbit to fall asleep in her arms. I feel pretty good about the outcome of this arrangement.

Afterwards Neil and I went around the corner for picadillo and pernil with beans and rice and maduros. I wolfed down my food quitely and tried to ignore the little empty spot, but it's there and there's no denying it.

Why worry? Just garden!

Ladies and Gents! I am now opening up sign-up for the 2012 Brooklyn Honey CSA! Last year was a success and much less stressful than anticipated, so frankly I am sold on this method of distributing excess honey from my Brooklyn hives.

This year, shares will include other bee-related treats in addition to the liquid gold we all know and love:

(Photo by Alex Brown)

"Share 1 will be available in July after Spring harvest. The honey will be light and herbal. I expect to be able to harvest enough to supply a 16 oz jar of chunk honey (comb suspended in liquid honey). Also included will be a small 4 oz jar of bee pollen.

Share 2 will be available in early October and will contain a 16 oz jar of darker, late summer honey, a jar of propolis tincture (for curing colds/flu, as an alternative to neosporin) and some homemade wax tealight candles.

All honey harvested is raw and unprocessed...exactly as nature intended it to be. It's great for natural treatment of allergies, colds, burns and wounds and tastes amazing on practically everything it touches! "

I will have full shares which include all that you see above and half shares. If you are interested, please email me and I'll send over the application which has further details listed.

Thanks!

After a few weeks of pity-partying, I've decided there will be no more of that sort of thinking. I apologize to my readers for having to endure it. I've recognized a fault in myself that I am going to fix right now. I think it's likely one of those things that most people do from time to time, but I think I am especially bad about it. I am speaking of the tendency to harp on all of the negative things going on in your life to the detriment of all of the positive.

I have a lot to be grateful for so it's important for me to occasionally remind myself to can it and just enjoy all of the exciting projects and people I have in my life right now. None of it is perfect. It never will be. If it was I wouldn't strive to improve. I'd just lie around basking in the perfection and frankly, that sounds really boring. I'm a big fan of turning lemons into lemonade. The lemonade always tastes better when you're exhausted from all of the squeezing. Am I right?

One of the things I'm happiest about at the moment is that my classes have been really well received. My goal is to really focus my attention on perfecting that part of my work. Better presentations, original print outs, videos, info-graphics. More web-based workshops for those of you that can't make it to my NYC classes. I'm working on improving the website so information about classes is easier to access.

Things at my home have improved a little. Where there is tension centered around one relationship, there is solidarity in another. There are people who have my back and I certainly have theirs too. I'm just going to approach everything on a day-to-day basis, lighten up a little and try not to let anything rob me of the joy all of this craziness brings me. I do hope it brings other people some joy too. It's difficult, if not impossible, to enjoy things alone.