And now for May...

It's hard to believe May's already here and well gone! The trees are full of leaves, the spring march of blossoms is well on its way. Our Lilies of the Valley are up, the gooseberries, currants and raspberries have all set fruit. There are cherries on the cherry tree and we're waiting for the first blossoms on the apple trees. The Elderberries are coming on strong, as are the newly planted blueberries and clove(black) currants.

But spring has been odd around here, so the garden is just now getting into motion. We planted garlic last fall and it's growing like mad out there, Mike has cauliflower that is loving the cool spring. At the beginning of this week we had sub-freezing temps, though, and he thinks the parsnips took a hard hit. We're still waiting to see if they come back.

We had a touch of sadness hit Friday though; our doe Blue broke her back Thursday night during a thunderstorm. Rabbits are flighty, jumpy creatures and we've been aware that it's a concern, that we might find a rabbit had leapt up in response to thunder(or any number of the loud noises they make next door). Part of the reason we chose quanset style hutches was for that very reason. So, our dear sweet Blue is gone, leaving behind a litter of 4 week old kits that we're hoping are weaned enough to be okay.

Let's see...what else.

Our mama hen and her two chicks are doing quite well living in the rabbit side of the barn. She's teaching them to scratch and forage and they're just starting to get real feathers :) Soon they'll be ready for her to take them outside and the fun will really start. Mike thinks they might both be roosters *oy* but we'll have to wait and see.

We are finally getting some nicer weather though, the sun is shining, gentle breeze, comfortable temperatures that don't require layers!

Hope everyone's well, and we'll try to update more often! It's just hectic around here!

Breeding like rabbits...

Well, if there's one thing owning rabbits has shown us is that there IS truth to the old saying "breed like rabbits". We have a rabbitry full of kits right now, with all four does having litters.

Ready for some cute bunny pics? Oh of course you are!

Lily was the first in the barn to have babies this fall after we took a hiatus from breeding to let the does regain condition and to ease the load for our trip to California. It took a few tries before any of the rabbits finally were bred, and we were beyond thrilled when we went out and found little squirming bodies in Lily's nest box.

These guys are seven weeks old now and will hang around for another three before we butcher.

Blue and Josie were next. Blue had eleven kits while Josie had four, so we ended up fostering three of Blue's with Josie's litter. As the babies were born during a bitter cold snap Blue still lost two of the kits to the cold. They're growing well now and will move into growout cages in a few weeks.

This little one is one of Josie's crew, and was playing peekaboo with Mike! Too freakin' cute!

What a face! (One of Blue's crew)

Josie's crew, I think ;)

Definitely one of Blue's. This little black otter was playing hard to get, but it's one of the cutest faces out there!

Last but not least is our youngest doe, Nestle. She's a chocolate color(duh!) and is Cocoa's daughter. She kindled Thursday before last with nine babies, all alive and well and birthed in the nesting box. One of the things I've always been told is that first time moms are prone to kindling on the floors of their cages, so we are just thrilled with her. On top of that is the sheer size of the litter, which is a good sized litter for a doe of production age, let alone a first timer! She's giving good milk and all of the babies are looking great!

Miss Nestle checking to make sure we covered her babies well after taking pictures.

So little! Their ears have only bee open for a couple of days now, but the fur is coming in great!

This silly oaf is our "backup" buck, Hydro(short for Hydrox...you know...the Oreo knock offs?) He's a trip, and we're still up in the air as to whether or not we'll be keeping him around.

So, there ya have it, an update from the rabbitry. There's more pics of the bunnies, if you want to check out our photobucket album!

Homegrown Goodness

Things are growing like mad for us this year, and what a relief that is! We're running like crazy as always, but that's the way we like it, most of the time.

So, here's what's doing on our three little acres.

The garden is almost entirely planted. Parsnips and eggplant will get transplanted this weekend, and we're aiming to get the corn in, too. Sweet corn, popcorn and dent corn, hopefully. After we get a couple more beds in, we have cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts to transplant as well.

As we've mentioned in previous blog posts, we've gone with raised beds to help combat the long cold spring. It's working wonders, and we've blossoms on peppers and tomatoes already, which is much better than last year. Of course, last year was a very cold, soggy one!


Here's our first pepper blossom. This is on one of our Jimmy Nardello pepper plants. Nardello's are a frying pepper and delicious!



This is the first of our okra sprouts. We've actually never tried growing okra before(or eating it, for that matter), but decided to after watching a show on it. We hope to at least pickle these, but we've a few recipes to try to see if we can conquer the infamous okra slime!



We don't have it fenced in yet, but this is the majority of the garden(we've one more bed to go for this year, at least). In the far left bed we have planted some cutting lettuces, spinach, chard, some head lettuces(you can't really see those), and Kentucky Wonder Pole beans. We ended up having to replant the beans, but now all of them are up and doing wonderfully. The first bed in the middle is our tomato bed. We have speckled roman, blue beech, and rutgers tomatoes in there, all three of which are paste tomatoes. Behind that is the root bed. Turnips, beets, and radishes, as well as some snap peas and a new bean for us, a purple pole bean. Those are all doing phenomenally well.
The first bed on the right has our peppers(two different bells and some nardellos), and will also have our eggplants(Diamonds and Rose Biancos) and possibly some edamame. Behind that is another root bed. Already there are celeriac(Root celery) and the rest of it will be planted with parsnips. You can't really see, but along the fence behind all the beds is an asparagus bed.

The strawberry tower is working fantastically. We've berries all over this puppy, some all filled out and working their way from green to white, soon to turn pink then red. We can't wait for those first berries :)



Can you spot the gooseberry in this picture? We transplanted our poor little bush this year, and it's coming on strong now. There are two berries on our little thorny gooseberry - one for me, one for Mike ;)


We have 25 red raspberry plants in this year that are coming on strong, but were we surprised to find some volunteer berry canes popping up around the property! We don't know what they are yet, but we're looking forward to finding out!


We did discover yet another benefit to having more than one bathroom in the house. 26 day old baby chicks arrived Tuesday, and after a long trek via truck, bike and air Mike settled them in the downstairs bathtub! The difference in their temperment is distinct, and they're doing well.



As for the rabbits, we've three litters in the growout cages totaling 22 fryers. I think we'll be butchering the oldest six in a couple of weeks, then the balance a couple of weeks after that. We will be culling a couple of our does when we do the first butcher, however, after hemming and hawing for weeks about it. We just don't need to have five breeding does.



And don't you know we work everyone around here hard? Willow just had to stretch out and take a nap the other day. You know, watching her dad work so hard is just exhausting!

Spring is here.

Spring has arrived in glorious fashion. The rising sun spreads a carpet of exploding dandelions across the lush green lawn, blossoms blushed with pink cluster on the apple trees, and the crab apples erupt like fireworks along the roads.

It is gorgeous and affirming, that once again we have made it through the winter.

The chickens scratch amidst leaf litter, announcing their finds with happy chirps and warbles. The rabbits have nests full of babies. A robin has a nest atop a post against the barn and scolds me daily as I go about my chores. Soon she'll be feeding babies from the bugs she finds in the yard.

The trees have finally donned their leaves. One can no longer look deep into the woods behind the house, between naked branches and trunks. Instead a brilliant wall of leaves has filled in - beech and poplar, oak, maple, cherry and birch. The canopies dapple the ground and sing as the wind moves through the leaves.

Soon, soon, vines will climb the trellises in the garden. Beans, snappeas, cucumbers. Seeds unfurl leaves and grow their roots.

It is spring, and I am renewed.

Spring is here.

Spring has arrived in glorious fashion. The rising sun spreads a carpet of exploding dandelions across the lush green lawn, blossoms blushed with pink cluster on the apple trees, and the crab apples erupt like fireworks along the roads.

It is gorgeous and affirming, that once again we have made it through the winter.

The chickens scratch amidst leaf litter, announcing their finds with happy chirps and warbles. The rabbits have nests full of babies. A robin has a nest atop a post against the barn and scolds me daily as I go about my chores. Soon she'll be feeding babies from the bugs she finds in the yard.

The trees have finally donned their leaves. One can no longer look deep into the woods behind the house, between naked branches and trunks. Instead a brilliant wall of leaves has filled in - beech and poplar, oak, maple, cherry and birch. The canopies dapple the ground and sing as the wind moves through the leaves.

Soon, soon, vines will climb the trellises in the garden. Beans, snappeas, cucumbers. Seeds unfurl leaves and grow their roots.

It is spring, and I am renewed.

Rabbits and chickens all around...

It was a pretty quiet weekend here, but we got quite a bit of work done on cleaning and rearranging the barn, making room and arrangements to move the three week old pullets and broilers from the office outside. The pullets now occupy a small enclosure under the unoccupied side of the new growout rabbit cages, and the broilers are in a setup just inside the main barn door.

We had the luck to pick up ten bales of really nice timothy/grass hay for a great deal, and took the time to do some cleaning and rearranging in the main barn section, clearing enough space to stack all the bales right inside of the door, and finding enough space to lay everything out in a much more organized fashion.

The picture below is what you see when you first open the barn door now. In the foreground on the left is the space the broilers now occupy - they'll stay here for a bit over a month before being butchered. To the right, just out of sight, is where the hay is stacked. Also on the right is where the feed is stored. Directly back are three of the current seven cages - Buck, our new blue otter doe, and, in the corner, is Amber. We'll be constructing another six foot long double doe cage here shortly, and it will replace Amber's current cage, and add another cage to the mix.


The cage just visible in the lower right corner of the picture below is the edge of Buck's cage. The main space of the barn makes an "L" shape around the chicken's area, and this is the short leg. Cocoa and Lily reside in the double cages along the right, and the cages along the left, where a couple of little curious buns are peaking out, is the new growout setup we installed last week. Cocoa's litter of eight is in there now(7 weeks old), and it's under the back section that our pullets are brooding.

And, here are our newest additions to the herd. This is the blue otter - she has a temporary reprieve - as we've decided to hold off making the final decision to send her to freezer camp until after we get a litter from her. We haven't named her yet, but she's an absolute cutey! She's fourteen weeks old, so we'll probably see about breeding her when we breed Lily back next time.

This is our newest addition - she's what's called a broken blue, and her coat almost looks like she has wings on her back.

And, last, but far from least, here's a shot of Lily's litter. Believe it or not, there's ten little kits in there. There's three black ones and the rest look to be castors.

I think that'll be all for this post. We've been up to alllll sorts of stuff, including canning more than 18 quarts of applesauce...and that's with a full bushel left to process! I'll try to post more later in the week :)

It's a grind...

Thanks to our wonderful local Pennysaver(that Mike reads cover to cover nearly every week), we are now stocked with grain for at least the next year. We met a local farmer who sells grain to the public, and we now have 100 pounds of wheat, 150 pounds of corn, and 50 pounds of oats. Cool, huh? Since all of it is in its natural form, we'll mix in some food grade diatomaceous earth to take care of bugs, and store it all in food grade buckets, courtesy of the local bakerys. at $7/50#, you can't beat the price, and in the inflationary market current gripping the country, it doesn't hurt to be prepared!

So. What are we going to do with all this stuff, you ask? Well, I've been wanting a grain mill for years, but never could find a source for the whole grain that was reasonable. So...now that we can get the grain, we got a grain mill. Here are some shots of Mike and I giving it a test run Tuesday evening....

First pass of corn through the grinder. You have to crack it, before you can grind it.....

After the second pass...a somewhat coarse cornmeal. I might have to pass it through again for some recipes, but that'll be a matter of trial and error.

And here's a couple of cups of fresh ground wheat flour. That wasn't bad at all. The grain mill we chose is a "Family Grain Mill", and is german made. It's incredibly easy to turn(we're manual for the time being, but will probably mechanize the process at a later date). The mill is incredibly versatile, and we ordered a flaker attachment to work with it as well, so we can make our own oatmeal. Of course, before we can do that, we have to figure out how to hull the oats!!!

Arrivals and Departures...

Well, we've had some arrivals and departures since the last post. We butchered our second litter of rabbits(Lily's first litter) this past monday, and her second litter arrived Friday evening. Her first litter was 6 - this one is 10!! She's very proud, and happy to be unpregnant, and we're very happy with her! We won't know colors or anything until later this week, but once their fur starts to come in I'll take some shots of them. Cocoa's second litter of eight is growing well, and they'll be graduating to the growout cage later, and we'll be breeding her back this coming Wednesday.

Other arrivals are these little fuzzballs! They're nearly two weeks old now(the pic is from the day they arrived), and are peeping, pooping and eating!

Yesterday was a day for running errands, today, for chores and tasks. We got the new chimney cap on - a LockTop Damper, that will hopefully help us battle the amazing winds we face living so close to Lake Erie. While up on the roof I took care of a piece of the trim that was a vicitim to one of our early spring storms as well.

We also took care of getting two grow out cages built for the rabbits, and hanging them in the barn. Cocoa's litter of eight will be moved into it when I go out to feed them this evening. All told, I think it took us more than two hours to build the cage, and probably an hour and a half to get it hung in the barn. We had to do a bit of rearranging/renovating to put them were we planning, but a pleasant side effect is that the chicken area is not much more secure, and looks much neater.

Now I'm off to work on apples - we were lucky enough to find a guy looking for people to take care of all the apples on his five trees, and came home with two 50# feed bags full, as well as a box full. So...applesauce, applebutter, and all sorts of other things apple are on the way!

A full week ahead...

Or rather, a full week in process.

We started remodeling the upstairs bathroom over the weekend, spending a good chunk of Sunday pulling up the peel and stick tiles that were put down by the previous owner. A piece of advice - peel and stick tiles are nice, easy to use, no mastick to worry about and so on - but not at all the appropriate choice for a bathroom. So, Mike and I took turns wielding the heat gun and prying up the tiles, one by one.
By the time we were done, we found the original green mosaic sheet linoleum beneath - and, actually, if it weren't for the tears and such in front of the tub, it wouldn't be all that bad. So, Mike spent the greater portion of yesterday struggling to get the adhesive left behind by the tiles up off the floor - inch, by torturous inch. He's about halfway through the bathroom, and we're hoping that we can work on laying the new flooring down tonight. If not, we'll be making the trip downstairs to use the bathroom until probably this weekend.
So...we have that going on, we're expecting chicks tomorrow - after hemming and hawing most the summer away, we finally decided that we really need to increase our flock. So, we've got 11 golden buffs(one of the most common brown eggs layers - the hatchery was sold out of Buckeyes), and 14 meat birds coming out way. We'll have to get them settled, then we'll be off to the first of two days of hunter education class.
We also need to butcher rabbits this week, Saturday is going to be spent finishing the hunter ed class, and we're expecting a visit from the breeder we got our rabbits from. She's interested in Otter - we'll probably trade for one of her rabbits, which'll help us keep some diversity in our gene pool.
And, at some point, we really have to start working on roofing the garage, and doing some changes in the barn that will allow the new chicks to move out there in a couple of weeks, and let us increase our growout cage space for the rabbits. Oh...and firewood...and tear down the pool...and start prep work for next Spring's garden...and...boy...I'm tired already!

So...any family wanna come join us for a working vacation? We have plenty to do!!

A Much Needed Update

Yeah, I know...I've been slackin'.

So this is going to be a long one...just to warn you ahead of time! I thought I might just do a chronological update of the past month's going's on, but I think it might be easier to follow if I just go by topic. So...here goes.

Rednecks and Rememberance

Last weekend Mike and I made a trip out to my mom's last weekend to attend a BBQ held to honor my grandmother's last wishes. It was nice to get to see some of my family members, and to hear other's memories of gramma, and we all shared quite a few laughs and tears.

I think Gramma enjoyed watching over us all, and my mom made sure to give her the seat of honor, right up close to the bonfire :)

I hope Gram heard us ribbing my aunt, though...I really think she would have appreciated it! She always had a great sense of humor, and loved to tease.

So...take a look at this...Aunt Coleen and Jess are quite proud of their outhouse, since they have so many bonfires and bbqs and such.

But...check out the decorating on this puppy....talk about your nice digs! Jess said she wanted to make sure you knew you were using the restroom "under the stars" :)

Now...the funny part is....and I wish I'd gotten a picture of it...that the outhouse is finished, but their kitchen is still under construction!!!

Things around our 3 acres...

Well, we've been trucking along rather well, livestock wise, but the garden is struggling. The weather has been unseasonably cool this year, with an amazing amount of rain, and that has proved a bit much for our garden to overcome. Our cukes have given up the fight, and the rest of our squashes have just been shivering in the chill. Our green peppers have been handling it rather well, but we've pounds of tomatoes just hanging out on the vines, waiting to make the transition from green to red. We've been harvesting green beans rather steadily, and our canillini and hutterite beans are drying - we'll be pulling them probably in a couple of weeks. The corn's doing so-so...we've got ears developing on the Painted Mountain and Golden Bantam, and the Kandy Corn that we planted late in the season is puttering along fairly well.

All in all, it's definitely been a season of learning about our climate and soil, and I'm definitely hoping we fare better next year.

The rabbits and chickens, on the other hand, are doing phenomenally well. Our mama hen is doing a fine job of teaching her three chicks how to scratch for bugs and free range, and it looks like only one of those is going to turn out to be a cockerel, which is pretty awesome. We've got an order of chicks coming the second week of September - half will be meat birds, the other half will be a pullet run of Golden Buffs, which are a standard egg laying breed. We wanted to get more of our favorite Buckeyes, but they were sold out.

As for the rabbits, Lily was bred Wednesday, so about four weeks from now we'll see her second litter born. Her first litter is seven weeks old today. We'll weigh them in two weeks and see how they're doing...and will probably head to freezer camp that weekend.

Cocoa's second litter is three weeks old today, and there are some beautiful coats coming in on those babies! She had eight healthy kits, and we lost two - though we do think we know what happened there, and will endeavor to prevent that happening again! They're growing well, eyes fully open and I expect to see them start to venture from the nesting box sometime this week.

Last but not least, here are shots of Otter and Amber. They're the two does we decided to keep from Cocoa's first litter, and will be added to our foundation herd to bring us up to four breeding does and a buck. They're growing well, and we'll probably start breeding them come the end of October or beginning of November. The same weekend Cocoa had her litter we butchered the other three from her first litter, and found that to be MUCH different than processing chickens, and while it's not something I enjoy, I definitely won't approach it with anywhere near the dread I view butchering chickens with!

So....that's what's going on here. We've been working steadily on projects around the place, some small, some larger, and are looking forward to building the future of our 3 Lil' Acres. Our fruit trees are coming along nicely, and I can't wait to get the rest of what we have planned to round out the place.

I'll try to be a little more diligent in posting updates...depends on what's on our plate from week to week though!

An update from the barnyard...

Well, this past weekend was a busy one. Our broody hen suceeded in hatching her eggs, though only three of them were viable eggs. So, we've two little fluffy yellow ones, and one black one. She's pretty protective of the little peepers, so no pictures of them as of yet.

The garden is truly beginning to come on strong now. Mike picked some peas today, and there are blossoms on nearly all of the plants - tomatoes, peppers, squashes, beans, peas. The first spaghetti squash has set on the vines, as well as the first cucumber. We pulled a handful of turnips and radishes out, and picked two heads of lettuce.

We got the growout cages completed yesterday and hung up in the barn. Poor Cocoa was cramped beyond belief, and everyone seems to be quiet happy with the new living arrangements. Fricasse, Hershey and Otter are in one of the new cages now, while Amber and Hassenpfeffer are staying with Cocoa for the time being, while they wait for me to pick up another feeder to outfit the other cage. Cocoa's due to kindle in a little under three weeks, so we'll make sure they're out in the next week or so, leaving her some time to chill.

Lily's doing really well, and her temperment seems to be improving a bit with motherhood. The babies have all abandoned the nesting box, and it's rather amusing to see Lily hanging out IN the box trying to avoid her kits.

A Box O' Bunnies

So, that's the goings on here-abouts. Working on the garden, taking care of the critters, and trying not to overheat as summer continues. Hope all's going well everywhere else, and I'll try to post more pics of everything sometime in the next couple of days.

Barely handfuls and more than...

Well, Lily's litter is a week old today, and I can't help but find myself amazed once more at how quickly the kits are growing. Their fur is in now, and the final tally is four solid black kits, and two castors(I think...we won't know exactly what shade - castor/lynx - until their fur is in more). Lily's proving to be a very attentive and protective mom, though she's still showing quite the attitude, though more with me, than with Mike. I meant to weigh the litter today and forgot, so I'll try to do that tomorrow, and add it to our records. I would weigh them individually, but unfortunately there's really no way to tell them apart, aside from separating the black from the castors, and no way to mark them, (the way most meat breeders mark is to dab a color on the back of the head - but those rabbits are white) since food coloring or something like that wouldn't show up on those colors.

As for Cocoa's litter, we'll be weighing them tomorrow as well, to get their six week weights recorded. They seem to be growing quite well, and three of the five(Fricasse, Hassenpfeffer, and Hershey) will move out of Cocoa's cage and into a grow-out cage tomorrow, all things going the way we have them planned. Amber and Otter will stay with Cocoa until she's closer to kindling, then will move into another doe cage(Otter's fate being up in the air at the time being).

We bred Cocoa to Buck Wednesday evening, so we should see another litter from her around August 10th. We're hoping for a better litter size from her this time, though still hoping to see the nice range of colors that she gave us the first time around. Definitely looking forward to the outcome there!

Population Explosion!

In the course of two days, the population of our little farm has gone from 21 to 32!! Lily had her litter some time between 6 and 9pm last night - six baby bunnies!

So...for all of you who are wondering what makes up that number....

Mike & Jen

Willow & Idgy(the indoor cats)

Pollux and DJ(Our lab mix and tabby outdoor cat)

DJ's litter of 5 kittens-shortterm residents, there ;)

Seven laying hens(one of whom is sitting on a nest of 11 eggs...more residents are imminent!)

Cocoa, Lily, and Buck(our rabbit breeding trio)

Cocoa's litter of 5(one of whom will be staying on a permanent basis)

Lily's litter of 6

Enjoying the long weekend....

Mother Nature has decided to grace us with some sun, finally, and everything on the property is enjoying it! The garden has started a burst of growth, and all of our berries and trees are thriving.

We checked the bees today, and they're doing really well. I managed to get the first bar up enough to see that it's full and capped, and they've just started building comb on the 5th bar from the back(there's a total of 17 bars in the hive). So, in about two weeks we'll check and see what kind of progress they've made on that bar, and depending on that, we may harvest in about a month. We'll store the honey back on the off chance it's needed to help them through the winter, but hopefully we'll find come spring that we're free to enjoy!!

Lily's due to kindle this weekend, and just looks very put upon by her pregnancy. She's due today or tomorrow, and Mike and I are checking regularly. She has a decent little nest built, but hasn't started pulling fur yet. I'll post pics of the babies when they arrive!

Cocoa's litter is growing amazingly well, and they're a trip! They'll be five weeks old tomorrow. The first is of the chocolate otter...all of the bunnies used to love to sleep under their feeder, but they've grown to the point that they don't fit anymore...so Otter's shoved her head underneath - she's camera shy!!

And it was bath time when we visited this afternoon...

And, last, but not least, here's the latest additions to our farm. DJ managed to sneak a heat past us and a tomcat found her...sooo, yesterday five little kittens arrived to take up residence in a box in our garage. There are three white ones, a black one, and a grey tabby. I took these pictures today. We won't be keeping any of them, but I'm going to make certain I tame them so we can find all five good homes :)