My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard Into a Farm by Manny Howard

Author:Manny Howard [Howard, Manny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Sociology, Social Science, xrnb, rsvra, Farm life, Farm life - New York (State) - New York, Country life, Urban agriculture, urban, Country life - New York (State) - New York, advance 3/10, Personal Memoirs, Urban agriculture - New York (State) - New York, advance 9/09, Rural, Backyard gardens, Technology & Engineering, Agriculture - General, Gardening, Backyard gardens - New York (State) - New York, homesteading, mcpl, list, General, New York, Biography & Autobiography, New York (State), Agriculture, Biography
ISBN: 9781416585169
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-07-15T02:10:23.185600+00:00

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It is mid-May. I am behind schedule. However, completion of the hutch has brightened my mood. I relegate the personal disappointments from the failures at tilapia farming (or even tilapia acquiring) to the slag heap of history. The promise of rabbit husbandry has buoyed my spirits. The future is bright.

When the day comes to install the rabbits in their new home, I layer a bed of straw in each cage and fill the two metal bowls, one for water, the other for the feed, in each cage. The rabbits take to the hutch with what I understand to be a rabbit’s typically understated delight. They appear somewhat startled when I turn on the HVAC system.

Following advice from both breeders and chat room experts, I leave the rabbits to acclimate to the hutch. From my observation post at the living-room window I am delighted to observe the buck and his two female neighbors sticking their noses above the wooden section of the partitions dividing their cages, pressing their noses to the wire grates and, their nostrils working athletically, drawing in great snorts of the rabbit next door. This can only be the precursor to extremely enthusiastic breeding. I allow myself to imagine waves of kits reaching five-pound fryer weight in record time, to predict that I will have to find a way to convince fainthearted friends and neighbors to accept the inevitable excess of rabbit meat.

I notice one unexpected behavior almost immediately. Rather than drinking the cool water I supply, the rabbits prefer to vigorously kick over the heavy metal bowls, splashing the water onto the grass on the bottom of the cage, then sit on the puddle. It is late spring, but spring all the same; it hardly seems so warm that the rabbits would need more relief than the HVAC system supplies, but everything I know about a rabbit’s circulatory system I learned while my mother read Watership Down to me during one summer vacation in England. It may have been a mild May, but a giant rabbit’s coat is no joke. Doe #2, the flawless white, seems especially fond of a good soak. Bottom line? The rabbits want to sit in wet grass. What could possibly be the harm?

The hutch complete, my giant breeders acclimated, all that remains is to begin the multiplication process. The predawn hours are optimal for copulation; apparently the same holds true for rabbits. Early each morning I stumble to the coffeemaker, swipe a cup, and deposit the females in the cage of the sand-colored buck, Buck #1. I vary the method of introduction. I vary the order of introduction. I vary the time they spend in the company of Buck #1. I vary the time at which each doe visits Buck #1. Before long the truth is inescapable. My rabbits don’t fuck like rabbits.

For two weeks I stand in my underwear in the predawn, the hour now twice confirmed in e-mails to Sugar Ray to be the optimal

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