Short catch up post after hail.

Life is complex and busy, and I'm terribly sorry that I missed posting yesterday. I try not to let life catch up to the point that I miss posting here but to really manage that I need to get a bit ahead on everything which I just haven't been able to do lately. I'm actually starting to look forward to winter in that I might have some extra free time. It's probably not the truth but I'm hoping!

The obvious down side to the winter is the weather. I personally despise the cold and snow. I'm fairly concerned about what this winter will look like with the crazy weather we've been having lately. The photo Left shows the smashed remains of our corn, I know the photo didn't come out very well but I'm sure you can see the mass of leaves on the ground. We had serious hail for the past couple of days. Very reminiscent of Texas with 90 degree days and pea to grape sized hail at night. I am just pleased that most of our plants made it despite the pounding rain and hail.

Due to the craziness of everything in my life other than the homestead there was a stay of execution on the teenagers until Saturday. I wanted to get at least half of that job done yesterday but I'm not going to do that in the hail if it isn't 100% necessary, and it just wasn't. But Saturday it does have to be done, we are 6 days from the next litters being born which means that the kits currently in with their mothers need to move out to their teen home!

For now all of them will be going to the big growing out hutch, but I have to get another hutch built sooner rather than later. I have the bottom wire and everything but the roof plywood for another 6' breeder hutch so I just need to churn that out promptly, and get down to acquiring more bottom wire for more hutches since we will be getting more stock soon. The biggest chore I really need to get at shortly is clearing out under all of the hutches. At this point it's gone from what is usually an easy task to having caught up with us to the point it will be a big task. Fortunately we have the garden cart to help us with that now. Shovel the mess into the garden cart, drag it over to the bed it is going to go into for the winter, pile it in, and smush it around until it's nice and mixed up.
 
The main time to do this will be between the killing frost and the ground freezing solid. The killing frost comes, and we rip out everything that doesn't survive frost. We put that into the compost and pile the rabbit waste and hay into the beds that have been cleared making a good solid mass of mulch hay over the top. That's also when we're going to be planting garlic for next year. This time I think we should plant even more garlic! If I have time and energy to spare at that point, that's when I get the planting areas for next year to expand what we can plant started. With darkness coming sooner and sooner that gets tougher and tougher, but I'd like to get at least the basic rows in to expand our planting area next year. I know early spring will wipe me out, so if I can get a jump on the job for then now, that's the ideal!

Sorry for the short post, I'll hopefully catch up with everything next week!