The morning went to butchering rabbits - yes, even on a holiday weekend that has to be done! Thirteen rabbits, all of them with beautiful pelts and nicely sized. After than I ran into the Village for a much needed haircut, then back home to tackle the rabbit once more! All of the meat is now parted out and more than half of it is wrapped and in the freezer. I think I'll try to get the remainder done later today.
Mike's knee is healing, and he's been getting around without crutches since Monday. Some days are better than others, but on the whole the knee is better than before the surgery. Wednesday is the followup visit, and we'll find out where we go from here. Otherwise, he has exercises from the physical therapist with a couple more weekly visits before he's free to proceed on his own.
We had a wonderful dinner last night. Mike grilled up some chicken and rabbit - and we were both thrilled to find out that my treatment of both of them addressed the worry of overly dry meat! A little oil, my special spice mixture and Mike's careful grilling turned out mouthwatering spicy grilled skinless chicken legs and thighs and lean rabbit quarters. Yummy. Accompanying that was the first pasta salad of the season!
Tomorrow we're going to be grilling out again - brats this time! We picked up a watermelon, and a friend might be coming down from Buffalo to hang out for a bit with her dog. Pollux should love that!
On to some farm news.
On the poultry front, we have 25 day old chicks coming in a couple of weeks. We're getting 11 Barred Rocks, 11 Golden Laced Wyandottes, and 3 Delawares. Here's what will be populating the chicken coop here shortly.
Initially our intention was to get the 25 and perhaps sell most of the pullets once they reached laying age. Well, tragedy struck last weekend, the day after Mike's surgery. A fox and her litter wiped out all but three of our hens. We thought we had lost the entire flock - no one heard a thing until the the last Buckeye squawked and drew out attention to the goings on. Needless to say, neither of us were happy. We're going to be taking a trapping course this summer and over winter we will take advantage of the fact that we are permitted to trap on our property. The predator pressure has been increasing, with raccoon, opossum, coyote and now fox all sighted in our yard.
Starting next week, we're going to a schedule of four 10 hour shifts at work. So, for the duration of the summer, I'll have three day weekends! I'm positive that the long weekends will more than make up for the long days.
Today we're hoping to get the tomatoes and peppers transplanted into the garden, as well as some more seeds planted. We're going to give okra a shot this year - the seeds we picked up are merely 56 days to harvest, and the plants produce until frost! We've a few different recipes to try, and hopefully this is another vegetable to add to our garden permanently.
Well, time to make some blueberry pancakes and get going today!
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