Transferring seedlings, seedling station, and a dog encounter in this busy spring.

As is expected for spring a huge amount is going on around the homestead. Some of it expected and some unexpected. As you can see the babies are growing well and rapidly, but a couple of them had a scary adventure yesterday morning!

Growth and preparation as spring fully arrives.

Back to focusing at home today after Tuesday's post on the rest of the picture with community and reminders that it isn't Just individual action that makes a difference. Growth is the word of the day around the homestead, which is exactly what we want at this time of year!

Meetings, events, and learning, going outside the homestead for new perspectives.

So I'm going to start with a quick homestead update glossing over a lot over the past few days. The babies are doing well, the garlic is growing, kale, radish  and lettuce are planted though those haven't come up yet. We are hoping they do come up because we are really excited about gardening right now, partially prompted by going to a Gardening 101 class put on by "Grow Food Amherst."

The next round of breeding begins, and a visit from a bear?

As usual, we begin today's post with our required injection of cute baby pictures. There are more below the cut of course along with a few other interesting photos. Including one of the damage left by what we are guessing was a bear!

The snow is gone, our seeds are sprouting, and the next round of rabbit breeding begins Thursday!

Yesterday was a full day around the homestead. After work I came home and put up private area walls in the growing out hutch so we can try housing two breeding does together with Halley and Comet. This morning they seem to be settling in well, though they are still a bit cautious about the camera.

Starting seeds inside, and the garlic sprouting outside.

We begin today with the traditional bribery of cute rabbit photos before going on to talk about gardening later. The babies continue to do well, and are very sociable. They have definitely been harrying Twilight though, much to her frustration. At least she has stopped kicking them the entire length of the hutch as she goes by!

Baby rabbits and a barred owl visitor!

Spring is here! Snow is melting and we can see the ground in a number of places. Ignore the fact that there's still foot deep snow in plenty of places, we can see the ground! We can start getting frost hearty plants in the ground as soon as I can jam a shovel through it! And obviously with this warmer weather combined with their age, Twilight's babies are coming out of the nest on their own to harass her!

Twilight's fast growing brood, and financial reality.

Twilight's babies continue to be a positive thing in our life which is really nice since we had such a rough week last week. Their eyes have opened fully, they are fairly friendly, and Twilight no longer trying to take people's arms off means that we can let friends play with them for a few minutes before she gets upset. We still put the babies in a box and bring them inside to weigh them, but that won't work much longer as you can tell.

A new week after a rough week. Learning and moving on.

Well, last week didn't close out as well as we would have hoped, eventually losing the last of Dawn's litter. We lost two more on Friday, and the last baby on Saturday despite moving the last kit in with Twilight's litter. On the other hand Twilight's litter is doing quite well, and Twilight herself only checks on me rather than attacking me at this point so I no longer fear injury while trying to handle the kits.