Catching up

It’s taken Instagram quite a while to catch up that I don’t want to see any more dog photography posts. Done.

Yet as I drive I still look for places that would be good settings for dog pictures. Done.

My membership to Hart Square Village ends on March 23, but I’m not renewing it. Done.

Instead I’m returning to my roots. I knew who I was way back when-when I started in the Photography Technology program at Catawba Valley Community College – a farmer, a writer and a photographer. The order of these “professions” or “passions” changes minute by minute, but who I am who I am.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the rabbits until I got them back. The group that I got are from my American Chinchilla program that I sold in 2021. I was so very blessed to get these rabbits back. They’re overweight and may or may not ever breed, but I’m going to give them a chance. Meanwhile, there’s tons of weeds that I can pull to give them. Once I get seeds in the ground there’ll be tons of extra vegetation I can give them.

They seem very happy to get it. I picked them up last Thursday. Wally and I worked our tails off getting the stands made and mounted and then getting the barn closed back up. It still needs some work, but we’ll get it there.

Meanwhile, winter’s back. It’s a good 40 degrees cooler this morning than it was yesterday. On Saturday, it was 75 degrees or so. Today it’ll likely not get to 50 degrees. Crazy weather, but that’s March for you. I got a lot of pots filled with seed starting mixture last week but have yet to put seeds in. Soon.

I photographed three state championship games on Saturday. It was intense, but exhilarating. I felt like I was rubbing elbows with the big boys there. Two of our teams won. All three games were good. I got some great photos. As I looked at them, I thought to myself, geez if I were still doing competitions, but I’m not.

It costs me $25 to enter one image that may or may not merit. It would take 25 merits to obtain a “master’s degree” from the Professional Photographer’s Association. If, if, all of the 25 images I paid $25 for got merit – which of course they wouldn’t – I would have spent $625. That’s a lot of rabbit cages, seeds, fencing, goats, etc. $625 for what – bragging rights? Would it make people flock to me get photos taken? Maybe, but likely not.

Photography, dog sports, even rabbits have become a sport for people with disposable incomes. I don’t have that. I very much live paycheck to paycheck. I was shocked to learn how much pedigreed rabbits cost – we’re talking young rabbits who may or may not survive to breeding age and breed. I don’t begrudge what breeders are charging – I know it’s expensive to raise rabbits – but I can’t afford those prices.

But rabbits don’t have to be expensive to feed. With a little bit of labor and ingenuity, you can save money on rabbit food. What really got me on the – we need to get rabbits again kick – was the hay that was left by the goats. They don’t like the stemmy pieces so they don’t eat it. Before rabbits, we’d clean out the main hay feeder of what they didn’t eat and put it in another feeder where if they want to pick on it, they could, but they rarely did. So it’d get thrown on the floor as bedding. Wasteful, sort of, but it’d get cleaned out and added to the compost pile so it’d get another life, but still.

Now, the rabbits get what they goats didn’t eat. They don’t eat it all, some of it still gets thrown on the floor, but again, it’ll go into the compost. There’s still less waste.

The garden area is loaded with false nettle, cleavers, chickweed, etc. that can be harvested for free (except for my labor – but it’s not labor – it’s exercise) and fed to the rabbits.

Maybe this will be the start of a daily thing. We’ll see.

Until later …