Wandering animals, and ethics vs feelings.

It's another rainy day with no great photos to share, and fortunately I've been thinking about ethics again. Before I get there though, we have a couple things going on around the homestead. First the turkey is missing this morning, and there's no exploded poof of feathers. I suspect she's going looking for a tom that will give her what she wants since I'm clearly not doing it for her. I hope she comes home soon, and we'll keep you updated. The second thing is, somehow in the weather changes the hutch with Dawn and her daughter ended up open. On the big up side, when I walked up and picked dawn's daughter up, she didn't run anywhere but back to the hutch and let me put her back in. The benefits of having well socialized rabbits. I guess being outside in the rain wasn't as much fun as she thought. Below the cut, let's get on to some thinking.

Rainy day thoughts on homesteading and hobby farming, and which we are.

On this rainy Thursday there is a lot going on, but not a lot to talk about it looks like. It is a good reminder of just how much the weather affects our day to day life, and controls what we can and can't do. Today though, it isn't changing what we were going to be doing. Almost all of what we are doing is preparing for the arrival of the Critter with house cleaning, and baby stuff preparation. Other than doing daily animal chores we haven't been doing anything really "homestead" related. At least, not homestead related beyond the fact that we live there. No photos worth getting from today or yesterday, so it's another old photo post.

Actually, on that note I wanted to think about homesteading and hobby farming. Before going on with the discussion let's set out some definitions.

Discussion: Whole Foods rabbit care standards.

I could subtitle this, rabbit production done right on an institutional scale, but out of reach for small operations. Before I get to the rest of this post which is going to be a bit long probably, I want to note that I'm not a fan of a 40 degree morning mid August.

There has been a lot of uproar from some pet rabbit groups about the inclusion of rabbit meat for sale at Whole Foods Market in some places. Right now it is a non universal program based on the local availability of rabbit to those stores. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/department/article/rabbit One of the things you can note in that link is a link to their animal welfare standards. If you haven't clicked through to read it here.

I read through it, and it isn't overly legalese in its presentation. It is in fact a clear document stating the requirements for keeping rabbits for sale to Whole Foods. I'm going to start with the ethical side of the keeping of the animals, and move on to the difficulties to the farm after I have covered the pure ethics and animal welfare side. I'm going to go through in some detail below the cut.

Independence Day

Today in the USA is Independence Day and around the world there are protests occurring for many reasons. So given today and the purpose of homesteading I'd like to take today to think a little about independence, and what it means both in a general sense, and in the specifics of our homestead.

Crocks! Also, tell us your dreams of homesteading.

No new images today because I foolishly forgot to grab the photos the Lady of the House had for me last night when I got home from work. I'd specifically wanted to have a few new photos of the babies who are doing well. Even the runt! I had really wanted the photos though because we have again been the beneficiaries of kindness, and I wanted to show folks.

Discussion: Is Ethics a Luxury?

To most people the answer is obviously no, ethics isn't a luxury. Ethical behavior is what keeps humanity from ripping itself to pieces. But really, beyond the knee jerk reactions let's look at it for real. For this post I'm going to confine it to, are ethical choices about food a luxury?