Aftermath of a snow day.

 Well, the promised heavy snow fall arrived, so I decided to include a photo that's from a similar angle to the one from Tuesday. We got about 14" of snow, which is barely more than the valley below us which is unusual. Most of the time we get a crazy amount of snow in relation, so it was nice to have a fairly average amount to deal with. The only wrinkle was that I broke my first shearing pin on the snow blower! I haven't replaced the pin yet because I finished up without it, and actually only noticed due to a friend seeing down the mouth of the monster and seeing it wasn't all spinning.

At least one chicken less, lots more firewood split.

Well, we knew it was coming at some point, but we are at least one, and possibly two chickens down. The Lady of the House was home yesterday due to it being a federal holiday here in the USA (I was not because my work doesn't care). She went outside due to the chickens acting strangely and seems to have scared something off. One of the Welsummers was gone, and Sergeant is also missing, and the Lady of the House found a "chickensplosion" with feathers all over, but no blood that we could find or tracks we could follow.

The babies are out and moving around, so are the chickens . . .

For a few moments I wasn't sure what photos to start with, but in the end you can't go wrong with a handful of baby bunny. The one Above is one of Halley's kits that is JUST starting to open it's eyes. Right now Halley's kits are still just barely at the opening their eyes stage. Twilight's just a couple days older on the other hand are already moving around.

One kit down, and decision making for early winter.

 We had a sad, though not entirely unexpected morning coming out to find one of Twilight's kits dead. We didn't do weight checks this morning because of the cold, but yesterday afternoon's weight check one of them had lost a Lot of weight all at once, and didn't have a nursing impulse when I tried to get it to nurse off a very obliging Twilight. On the up side, all of the other kits are doing particularly well!

Two litters, and two blanks.

The weekend has passed, and more babies have been born to Halley which you will be able to see below as black blobs. Dawn and Comet on the other hand have not given birth, and we're starting to be fairly certain that at the time they were bred Dorado was heat sterile!

News of all kinds, and introducing Serena.

Today is a day of news! Good news the first! Twilight has given birth to 5 big, healthy kits. She had 9 total, but 3 were under developed, and one was born dead it seems. Fortunately the rest of them are thriving, and for a single shot breeding rather than one morning and one night the way we usually do, that's not bad at all. 

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!

Some very New England weather

Since Thursday the weather has been strange and all over the place in a very New England fashion, and promises to continue doing so in the near future with near freezing temperatures night before last and tomorrow promising to be a near 100 degree day. At least we're not seeing a 65 degree difference in a single day again.

Friends old and new, learning, growing, enjoying, and aspiring.

Today is going to be a big picture light, especially given just how much went on this weekend. This morning was one of those days where I was just dragging every moment. That to be fair, hasn't really changed even now but there it is. This weekend was really busy for us and mostly in good ways!

Quick, look at the cute! Ignore the man behind the keyboard!

Today's post isn't going to have as much substance in it as I'd like since I've been sleeping very poorly lately. What I really wanted to talk about was a really awesome talk by Marion Nestle the Lady of the House located, and the information in it. Instead I'm going to coast by on cute rabbits, and getting into winter prep.

More and more fresh foods even as the mornings get darker.

A cool mid September morning, seeing our breath as we do rabbit chores, and things are normal. Aside from the fact it's mid August. I'm enjoying the really pleasant weather, but it is a bit of a strange weather pattern going on around here right now. The rabbits love it, but they won't if it continues to go on the seasons at this same rate by early October when our next litter is planned.

A very autumnal August as we muddle on through.

The Lady of the House is back, and we're back to having good photos! Lots is going on in our life, which seems to be a refrain right now. But let's start by focusing on the babies. Above is the runt of all of the litters that's still alive, and seems to be inclined to stay that way much to our pleasure and relief. Obviously in the realm of don't count your bunnies before slaughter date, but it looks like we'll have 20 survivors out of the 23 in these last litters.
Halley and Comet's litter has been a fairly significant focus for us in this last round which is why you've seen so many photos of their babies. The runt is from their litter, and the picture of the black and creme pile Left is obviously theirs. It has been a focus because we really want to see if it is practical to have parents in the same hutch. There seem to be definite advantages and disadvantages. Halley and Comet enjoy each other's company is a big obvious benefit to it. A down side though is they reinforce each other's fears and nervousness more than they reinforce their strengths. With the rather unique choice they made to lay in the same nest the up side is all of the babies can cluster together or migrate apart to be warmer or cooler to self regulate temperature a bit. The down side is that the phenomenon of some babies not getting enough milk is exacerbated because there are more babies in one place, and both moms seem to sometimes feed the same babies. Things I think could help for the future of two moms in a hutch. 1: Have three or four smaller nesting areas rather than two larger nesting areas. The hutch Halley and Comet are in suffer from being designed specifically as a growing out hutch, and it's really showing more than I expected. 2: A second level is a must for anything I hope to have as a two doe breeding hutch. Sometimes everyone needs a bit of alone time. Unfortunately (and this again, seems to be a refrain) I haven't had as much time to work on building new hutches as I'd like to have. It's the curse of working 60 + hours a week. It has been exacerbated by troubles that I'll talk about near the end of the post.
Before I move on from kits I want to address Monster Kit Right. The photo Above of a baby on the scale is about a normal sized kit, note the size in relation to the scale. Compare to Monster Kit barely fitting on the scale at just about the same age. We are kind of amazed at monster kit, and if it turns out to be female we may just have an American White, because that's going to be one big healthy kit it looks like.  618 grams today.



Gardening, intentional and otherwise continues. Let's start with unintentional, specifically the blackberry bushes that crowd the side of the deck and are absolutely Covered with berries that are still ripening at almost a cup a day! At this point we have a full 1 gallon bag of blackberries and about the same quantity of yard strawberries which is great. We need to make the time to make a pie, or a few. A few notes for those of you who are genuinely city folks and have never picked berries before, specifically blackberries. Their thorns don't point out so much as in, make sure you have a clear exit from the bush before you climb in to get at the big branch of ripe berries that's JUST out of reach. Also, while the idea of using gloves to pick berries to avoid the thorns sounds like a good idea, it probably isn't unless you like mashed berries all over your gloves.
Next stop, and virtually unmentioned for a while is the pepper plants. They're looking great, particularly the lemon peppers and the cayenne peppers. The challenge as first timers is, when to remove them. Something the Lady of the House cautioned me about is apparently you Must cut the peppers from the plants because pulling them off can kill the plant prematurely. Good to know when you want ever more peppers as I do! Our big concern with the peppers is keeping an eye on the weather, with temperatures dropping into the low 50s at night consistently in mid August we are obviously concerned because peppers are hot weather plants. The one you see in the picture Above is potted so if it gets particularly cold we will be bringing it in to attempt saving it and keeping it going all winter, just because.
Given it is our first year of gardening we were expecting a fair number of disappointments, and Left is the first confirmed disappointment other than the under producing Squash, the dead Sunflowers, ok so it isn't the first. If you can't tell what it is that's a single very small potato. It's all that came out of one of the 4 potato buckets. The other three plants are kind of still alive so we're hoping for better out of them, but, from the positive perspective, it's our first home grown potato! We've had a fair number of firsts this year, and for some reason I was really looking forward to having a bunch of home grown potatoes which is why I'm particularly disappointed about the potato plants just being mauled by bugs. We'll see what the other 3 buckets produce.
I mentioned complications in our life, and I am not sure if I've mentioned the big one. Our car died a bit over a month ago at this point, and it's made life complex. We have been VERY blessed by friends with two different friends loaning us vehicles so far, and a family member loaning us a car starting next week. The car you see Right is a rental as we try to figure out what we want, need, and can afford in a vehicle. It's led to the Lady of the House and I working on figuring out what it is we need in a vehicle based on our realities.

1: We live 25ish miles from work, and drive 500+ miles a week. We need to be driving something with a reasonable gas mileage which eliminates a lot of the things that would be particularly good for some of our later requirements.
2: Space is a consideration given that not only do we commute a lot, but we also need to be able to haul around lumber, hay, food, etc as well as ideally be able to fit a friend or two into the back seat. So based on that we've been thinking hatch back because a pickup truck is ruled out by the gas mileage thing.
3: Reliable, but I'm fairly sure everyone wants this in a car. What that means for us is also not too expensive to repair which usually means Honda, Toyota, or the like based on our area which unfortunately rules out one of our first choices, the Subaru hatch back line.
4: Inexpensive, we are not doing well financially, especially with adding in car costs we're having to watch carefully what we can get.

So that's what has been taking a lot of our brain sweat lately, trying to figure out the car situation. For now, the kindness of others has been keeping us on the road, but imposing consistently is something we'd rather not do, so hopefully we'll have our perfect mixed lifestyle vehicle that doesn't cost much to maintain or purchase soon. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Welcome rain, fresh tomatoes, and a range of babies.

It's a very grey day as we get more rain up on the hillside which is a pleasant and positive thing after a few days of sun. If we got good soaking rains every third day after two days of beautiful, perfect sun I'd be thrilled, but that of course is how irrigation plans work, not reality. The rabbits are never hugely thrilled about rain, it affects their food and anything that affects their food isn't something they enjoy. Quite the contrary in fact. However, rain doesn't affect the quality of fresh greens, and the tiny baby Left, the smallest of Comet's babies is discovering the joys of fresh greens in the wake of me doing daily weight checks. An enormous offense to be sure.

Babies exploring, and food transition.

Today's post is going to be a little shorter than normal due to the scramble of getting the Lady of the House out on her way to Otacon where she's selling this weekend. The unfortunate part is with me taking the photos there aren't the good quality photos of the babies first wanderings outside of their nest we'd usually have.

Eyes opening on a surprisingly cold morning.

It's getting towards peak cuteness, not there yet but the opening eyes days are always some of the most fun for us on the homestead seeing all of the little ones opening their eyes and experiencing the world for the first time. We haven't had any instances of nest box eye recently, but we always keep our eyes out for it so it doesn't become a problem.

Those delicate days

It's that delicate time where some babies are growing and some are struggling. As you can see above one of the average sized babies of Dawn with Comet's struggling 44 gram baby.

Awash in a sea of baby rabbits.

Awash in a sea of baby rabbits, there are worse things in the world if you enjoy small fuzzy creatures. Right now we temporarily have 23 babies, 13 teenagers, 5 Creme breeders, and 2 American Blue breeders on the ground. It's quite a hand full.

Not all livestock and plants are created equal.

As the title says, the world of agriculture is not the world of Animal Farm. Not all are created equal, and that has been showing up all over the place in the last week or so. I'll get to the plants part later, but let's start with the group that has the most more equal individual, the Chickens.

Chickens and Kits!

As you may have guessed from the photo, the chickens are finally here!

They're still chicks, but not quite babies anymore as you can see from their size compared to my hand and the cat carrier. Right is how we brought them home from Michelle Chandler's house where she'd been generously keeping them with her chicks while we scrambled around trying to get everything set up for them. We put all 6 of them in the cat carrier, and got them home as quickly as possible. Learning experience, make sure there's something on the floor of the carrier or they'll slide around on the plastic at every single turn. That sliding stresses them out, and trying to cram something in under them after the fact is a bit of a challenge, and stresses them out even more. But even with all of that, we all got home safe and sound.

We picked up the chicks Saturday, and they stayed  in their coop on Sunday. But yesterday evening, we tried introducing them to the run. In the coop they're a bit standoffish, but happy to come over for food. In the run on the other hand we're actually a source of normal for them so while they were getting used to the run they spent most of their time clustered around the Lady of the House or I as we sat in there with them. Once they got more used to us they moved off and explored the area a bit. They all have very different personalities that we'll be talking about more as we follow the growing chickens. It looks like we ended up with 4 Americauanas, 1 Welsummer, and 1 we're not quite sure yet.

We definitely have one dominant bird, the very light colored one that stands out from the rest, she's a bit larger and a lot more determined to get what she wants than the others, and the others aren't inclined to disagree. The Welsummer which is Top Left staring at the lens of the camera is the most adventurous, but least focused on spending time around the other chickens. She investigates everything, and every time we put a treat like worms or bugs in she's the one that gets them. The others are too busy staring at them or trying to figure it out, she figures it out with her mouth.
One of our big concerns with the chickens was making sure Rico wasn't a problem, so we went to trying to get him used to the chickens right away. There are two basic ways that people tend to make sure dogs don't kill chickens. After the dog kills one, strap the chicken carcass to their neck for a week and let it rot while keeping them tied outside, and the other is what we're doing which is called desensitization training which is a positive mostly method. We tend to try to shy away from aversive training methods like tying a dead chicken to the dog. For desensitization training you bring the dog towards the exciting thing (Chickens), and find where the dog can still pay attention to you. You do obedience training and reward the dog for ignoring the chickens. You do this getting closer and closer until the dog can be right next to the chickens. We're only on day 1 of it, but so far it seems to be doing well. We are still doing this on leash, but we hope to have it so he can be off leash while we do chicken chores without being a problem, though he'll never be unsupervised around chickens.

Chickens aren't the only thing going on around here of course, as the rabbits continue to grow. We're preparing for the next breeding cycle to start. On Thursday we're going to be doing the first breedings with Twilight bred to Umbra, and Dawn bred to Dorado. Friday we'll do Halley and Comet. Hopefully this time both will have live litters so we can see how they do with two litters in the hutch. We actually expect it to work out fairly well given how they've reacted this time to sharing space while there's a litter on the ground. Both girls have been very protective of the babies, and while I haven't been able to confirm both of them feeding the babies, I know that Halley at least goes in and checks on the babies as much as their mother Comet.

This round we have one rabbit already showing Dorado's paternal influence in the set of its ears. Below Left the left of the three babies has Dorado's ears. For comparison Bottom Left is Dorado in all of his studly glory. Overall though we're happy with how the sisters litter is doing, and while the two of them don't have the best temperament, I think that it is nice to have the two of them together to keep each other company. If we can't get both breeding at the same time it won't be as good obviously because we'd be feeding twice the mother maintenance amount per litter, but it may well be worth it for happiness's sake anyhow. That's something we'll be watching and evaluating over time.

Speaking of happiness, and we don't have  a photo of them today, but Twilight's older litter is very happy, and we'll be sorry to see them go which will be happening soon. It's a shame that both of the blue kits are male because we don't need males, but they are both GREAT examples of American Blue. If they were female we'd be keeping them hands down. But, the genetic lottery wasn't that kind.

Twilight's current babies are also doing very well. As with her last litter, they're bigger than usual, and noticeably bigger than Dawn's and Comet's litter. We swear the blues grow faster, but it could just be coincidence. Getting good photos of them continues to be a challenge, even more so right now because we've done some re arranging of the hutches.

Bottom you can see the new arrangement of where Twilight and Umbra's hutches are. To try to avoid the problems we had last summer with heat, specifically with Umbra's heat sterility we've moved them into the woods. I'm considering moving the other hutches off into the woods as well. The micro climate is much cooler, they're in shade all day but still can see the sun, and are still close by. So far they seem to be happy with it, but the pictures from those hutches definitely come out a bit dark! Signing off for now, but on Thursday hopefully we'll have more chicken news for you.

So many babies! Trying to catch up with the cute quota as well as garden progress.

Cute baby bunny pictures were promised, and here we are today, quick delivery! This won't be just about the babies or even just about the rabbits, but we're going to start off with a good dose of cute with some good news. Our concern about tomato blight wasn't necessary yet. From the opinion of a couple experts in the form of Michelle Chandler and Kathy  Harrison who's blogs you can see on the right it's not blight, just mineral deficiency which is much better.