Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Bunnies on the farm

Every Tuesday we drive over to Terra Firma Farm to do the morning chores. I guess you could call it our volunteer job, though it doesn't feel like volunteering. We invite friends to come help us. Often, it's the highlight of our week.

I am so grateful to Farmer Brie and Farmer Ethan for having the courage to make a community farm. They let the kids have the run of the place. It's heaven, I'm telling you.

We feed the pigs, feed and water the chickens, check the bunny food, collect eggs, carry bales of hay to the donkeys and the sheep, toss scratch grains for all the animals, make a puddle pond for the ducks, and do our best to keep the goats out of the grain shed.

On warm days we make a wet wallow for the piglets. They grunt and roll in the mud and root with their weird noses. While I was in the pig pen this morning, a calf was born in the next field. Mama mooed to beat the band and out popped #27.

A bunch of baby bunnies were born about a month ago. We were doing chores that day just a few hours after the birth. Mama Bunny pulls fur from her chest and puts it in a nesting box inside her cage. In exchange for half an apple, she'll let you pull the box out to peek. We saw them when they were hairless pink and mostly blind.

Today they were white and hopelessly cute. Farmer Brie let the kids take them out and hold them.



Simon, my gentlest child, is oddly rough with baby animals. I think it's mostly a gross motor problem, though he was trying to get his bunny to karate kick on his lap.

Here is Nell telling him to stop.

He left the barn soon after to run outside with the sheep. He had us all in hysterics in the car later telling us how he actually rode a sheep: "The sheep just ran and I held on to his wool."

Good friends, good bunnies, good morning.

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