in my kitchen, around the farm
wooly, wild, wabbity wonders
The most marvellous morning miracle greeted me this week. One of our rabbit does had her first litter of kits. Oh my, they are glorious, all slick and naked piled up in their luxurious fur lined home. A doe pulls hair from her chest and stomach to line her nest a day or so before giving birth. I wonder, as a first time mom, if she was suddenly alarmed when she had the overwhelming urge to start yanking hair from her body. How in the world do instincts like this even even package themselves up from a mother to her daughter and just lay dormant until some special moment triggers a signal that demands the secret package open itself and fill a little bunny with urges so great she has no choice but to follow? She doesn’t even know why, but she acts on the foreign impulse that commands her. How do these things travel along the cells and through the blood of a body to be passed along for decades and centuries so that one day, on a day like this week, a wee little rabbit knows just what to do and when to do it so life carries on? If that’s not a wonder to behold, I don’t know what is.
I spent some time admiring those little rabbits, wondering about these things. One of our heifers had her first calf this week and she, too, just knew what to do. She knew to lick her calf dry. She knew to make her lovely, gentle sounds so that calf would know, “this is the sound of mama”. She stood still while the wobbly little calf found her way to her udder and clumsily attempted her first sip. Infinite patience and observable pleasure. What a marvel to witness.
In the duck house, a cache of eggs have been building up and dutifully buried before we enter every morning to collect eggs laid overnight. I pretend I don’t see the growing mound and leave them untouched. I just take from the other nesting boxes. Soon, once the mamas have decided there’s enough eggs, they will sit on them with dutiful dedication, hissing at me if I get too near.
It pleases me beyond being pleased - all of it. I am not a perfect farmer and there are many things that I could do better, but to be able to honour the instincts of these beautiful creatures, to give them the space and respect they deserve to live in alignment with their design is a source of great meaning in my life. I would choose