What's Up, Doc?

First published in the May 30 issue of The Oxford Journal by Sara Mattinson.

I was out in the field behind the house snatching up sharp green shoots of new spring grass for the rabbits when I realized it had become awfully dark. The dog barked; she was standing at the door wanting in, not realizing I wasn’t in the house, all cozy warm and dry, but standing outside in the pouring rain. All to give the bunnies, tucked inside all winter, a taste of spring.

Whenever I give a tour of our property I get asked, “Rabbits! You have rabbits? Why?” 

My usual answer is, “My husband wanted them. He had them when his kids were little.” 

(Then when people see how big our rabbits are, they want to know if we plan to eat them. The answer is no.)

 But now I have my own reason for keeping  rabbits: I am keeping rabbits for the endless supply of poop. It’s nice to a greater purpose for that endless supply: it makes great fertilizer so I keep a scoop and a large bucket next to the pen in order to save the poop that gets cleaned up every day. Don’t laugh: There are now two full buckets waiting to be mixed into soil and spread over my gardens. 

I came across this gem of information about rabbit poop in a book about urban farming by Novella Carpenter. Apparently, chicken poop, which I also have in great abundance, is high in nitrogen and needs to be composted before it can be applied to gardens. Rabbit poop, on the other hand, is perfect, coming as it does out of the butts of herbivores. 

Here is something else the book told me about rabbits that my husband didn’t know: Rabbits like baguettes. Stale baguettes, to be precise, the hard, crunchy kind leftover from a Saturday night dinner party when bruschetta was the appetizer.  It is good for the rabbits’ teeth. Considering that Novella Carpenter is farming in San Francisco, days-old baguettes are a reasonable substitution for poplar limbs. 

So now when I go to the grocery store, I pick up a whole wheat baguette and leave it on the counter for three days. 

“Why aren’t we eating that?” my husband asks. 

“It’s for the rabbits,” I tell him and ignore his snort of disgust. 

Does that make our rabbits spoiled?

Of course they are. In the farming book, all the rabbits get eaten. 

Rosie and Daisy in their "cottage". 

Breaking News

The Application brought before the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board sponsored by Bob O’Connell, Eldon Mundle and Kevin Polley to dissolve the Village of Pugwash has been dismissed.

The first application was to reduce the size of the Village and then in 2010 to dissolve it entirely.  Both these applications have been unsuccessful. 

“I believe these petitions and applications to the UARB to have been a monumental waste of taxpayer’s money,” the Pugwash Village Commission Chair, Rod Benjamin, said. “The first application cost Village tax payers $48,000 in legal fees and the second cost another $32,000. Both applications were dismissed and it is now time for the community to heal and get along with the business of being this unique, beautiful place."

Benjamin went on to say that projects and plans have been on hold for years due to this business with the UARB. 

“With these applications behind us, the Village Commission looks forward to working with all members of the community to build upon the services and amenities provided in the Village.  Pugwash is a beautiful place to live where business can develop and thrive. Encouraging economic development and increased settlement are priorities for the Village,” said Benjamin.  

Coffee and Art: A Perfect Combination

Just writing that title makes me crave a visit to a certain cafe in a certain village on the Northumberland Strait.
In tomorrow's issue of The Oxford Journal, watch for an article on a new art gallery that's opened in downtown Pugwash. Another brilliant idea from Norene Smiley, who co-owns the delightful Chatterbox Cafe with her (equally delightful) husband Greg.
The Pop-Up Art Space is filling a space adjacent to the cafe that was recently vacated by a gift store. Instead of leaving the large room empty until it is rented, Norene, who is a painter, figured out a great way to make use of the store and highlight artists at the same time.
Diane Burnham and Isaac Fresia are two local artists who are featured for the month of June at the art gallery on Durham Street in Pugwash.

New Baby Days

We've been through this before, my husband and I, the feedings, the sharing duties, the fishing.
Yes, we are thrilled to announce the osprey that live next door are definitely feeding young. How many we won't know for another few weeks; usually the big reveal comes around July 5 but spring was early this year and the osprey returned together, instead of days apart, so perhaps their breeding and incubating was early, too.

 Looking forward to the moment when we see those little heads popping up over the side of the nest, checking out that vast world around them.

What's So Hard About Composting?

First published in the May 23, 2012 issue of The Oxford Journal by Sara Mattinson.

The dogs were barking like crazy as a man walked over to our property dragging two wheeled green bins behind him and for a split second, I considered letting them out to chase him away. What do we need with two green carts, after all? 

The county is handing them out to each civic number so even the empty lots like the one next to us gets a cart so I fetched the carts from the curb and parked them next to our two half-full composters. 

The first thing I did when I moved here six springs ago was set up a composter. Languishing as I was in a large town in Ontario, I’d actually developed a twitch that struck every time I put a banana peel or egg shell in the garbage can. I had waited years to have a composter because it is simply the best value-added way to deal with household organics – less into the garbage can and a by-product that makes more food grow. Yet here was the county passing out large, wheeled green bins for household organics so they could take them away. I’d never see my egg shells and banana peels again.  

So another Myth of Country Living is crushed by the reality of modern life: very few people are raising their own food these days. Not everyone who lives on a rural route has a garden and not everyone composts for the sake of having that wonderful black soil that comes out the hatch in the bottom (yes, that’s what that is for).

To confirm the demise of my long-held belief, I called a couple of neighbours to see how they felt about the handy-dandy green carts and discovered that there are three types of people out there: Those who compost to use the by-product, those who throw their organics out behind the barn or out in a field, and those who use a garburator.

“I don’t have a composter and I won’t use a green cart because of the bears who walk through our yard,” said one garburating woman.

Another man is already using his to store his garbage bags in until garbage day while my husband figures we can use them to store chicken and rabbit feed. My 86-year-old father-in-law doesn’t know how he’s supposed to drag the cart up his mile-long driveway every two weeks. 

For some reason, I am shocked by all of this: by the lack of composting, by using drinking water to flush food waste into our already-besieged water systems, by our ever-growing distance from the earth and the fact that our food actually grows in dirt (not at the grocery store). As someone born and raised in town who broke her back making gardens as soon as she moved to rural Nova Scotia, I can’t believe compostable materials get no respect.   

Then I walked into my friend Angela’s kitchen and there on her kitchen counter was the little bin from inside the green cart, and it was already half-full.

“I quite like it,” my friend says of the new composting system. “Everything that is wet waste goes into the green bin, including bones. Now that we are limited to one privacy bag, we have to save those for cat litter and bathroom garbage.”

Angela says they’ve always composted but, without gardens, never had any use for it. 

“I’m known for throwing out it in the yard then mowing over it,” she laughs. “This is a better way to deal with our waste.”

A fascinating split in opinions but it seems I’m alone in my enthusiasm for creating compost. It’s the enthusiasm of the converted city girl for being connected to the land, for growing my own food, and for smelling that crumbly, pungent soil that makes my roses robust, my tomatoes tasty, and my lilies lively.

Our First Local Strawberries of the Season

Very exciting. I refuse to buy those long-suffering, woody strawberries that come from California, preferring instead of wait until June for the ripe, sweet taste of our real, local, handpicked fruit. These babies came from a farm near Great Village.
Worth the wait. Worth the drive. And in a few months, our Oxford strawberry farmer will be selling his fruit. Don't miss out. Only once a year...

The Inner Workings of Writers

I posted here about Cumberland County resident Harry Thurston winning the Dartmouth Non-Fiction Book Award for his book about the north Atlantic. Well, right as we speak (I'm easily interrupted), I'm listening to the tape of our recent conversation and making up notes to be this week's profile. This is the indulgence of my "In Conversation With..." column: I get to interview writers and artists. Why not take advantage of this man's good nature -- I knew it because I'd had dinner with him a few years ago before a fundraiser for the Pugwash library -- and get to know this eco-journalist better?
Harry is a lovely man, more so because he gifted me with his latest collection of poetry, Ova Aves, about wild bird eggs. My favourite part of the interview was learning how he could be a poet and a journalist at the same time. I wasn't surprised to learn that his poems are written by hand in small black notebooks.
Besides The Atlantic Coast, Harry has another award-winning book, A Place Between the Tides, about living along the salt marsh. Harry lives in Tidnish Bridge, outside of Amherst. 
Watch for our conversation in next week's issue, June 6.

Here's a quote from Harry I've come across halfway through our interview, about writing and what to write. He's says he discovered this along the way. 
"The things that you care about the most are the things you write best about."

And now that I've flipped the calendar to the new months, I realize my next Field Notes column is June 13. I suppose I must write something on the topic of fathers since that day falls on the 17th. Now that I've dropped that intention into the percolating part of my creative brain, I wonder what will drip out?
I've been trying to create an outline for a personal essay on trees and my father and my husband, and how they are all connected. Perhaps I could create the first 500 words of that essay in my column.
Okay, trees, inspire me.