The time has come.

In short order after Tuesday's post, things have changed again. Our furnace failed spectacularly. While we've always wanted a hot tub, 5" of boiling water in the basement was not quite what we'd wanted. With the results of that, and everything else going on, we've shifted from "We need to fix up the house, and sell but we'll keep it private for now" to "ASAP."

Where does that leave the blog? Well, sale in our area usually involves 2 years on the market once we get the repairs complete. I see no reason to not keep up what we're doing with this as we move along and keep doing what we're doing. I intend to keep going with the blog, and keep on keeping on for now. I will keep updating folks both on the homestead side of things, and will let folks know if the blog is likely to close or take a break for a while.

For now, I'm going to post the information from our Go Fund Me. If anyone's looking to buy a house in the hills of MA, or pay for all of our repairs let us know! We love the house, it's a great house in good condition other than a couple repairs. The real reason we have to move comes down to, our financial situation isn't improving, and hasn't improved for years. Without our finances improving, we end up with our one car dragging the Critter around for hours a day which isn't ok. So, it's time to change.

I figure, closing on a rainbow seems appropriate. If you're interested in the Go Fund Me you can go to the link, or I'm including the text below.

As some of you may know, we have reached a challenging point in home-ownership.  We had planned to keep it private, but we had already decided to move after the latest in several major expenses when the well suffered damage due to the previous home-owner's "DIY tendencies." We simply cannot keep up with the expenses, even with insurance.  We LOVE this house, but the distance and issues have made this a completely untenable situation.

We have long spent our emergency funds and ability to take loans/credit cards. Those who have been to our house know that we hadn't even had a chance to repair the damage from the first plumbing issue (affectionately known as the "Speed Bump") where the improperly installed dishwasher dripped through to the basement.

We just had our oil furnace completely give up the ghost. Our insurance is probably helping to cover much of the water damage caused by 4+ inches of hot water, but not the new boiler which is the priciest part. While having a hot tub is something we wanted, in the basement by surprise wasn't really what we were hoping for.  No one was hurt and there wasn't a fire though, which is lucky.

For the destroyed oil furnace, while we may qualify for fuel assistance to get a new burner through Massachusetts grant programs, they are out of money at this time, and may not be able to start qualifying us until November.  We are looking to see if an exception can be made but the process is slow and unclear. We also are out of hot water and heat until it is replaced (though the water otherwise works fine thanks to that last repair...thank god!)

We would normally never resort to such a thing, but times are bad.  We were trying to save for the new roof, or the painting that the house badly needs to be lived in long term, much less resold, but things kept coming up.

If left in this state, things are only going to get worse.

We are asking for help with covering some of the expenses because we are out of options. We are going to continue to try to pursue grants and things of that nature, but realistically much of it will need to be out-of-pocket. There are some things on our list that are musts, and some that are maybes.

Houses don't sell well in our area, so it's necessary that it's at absoluty move-in ready and passes inspection to sell in any length of time.

To start with the money would be used for:
Paying the well repair company
The installation and cost of the new furnace
Repairing the floor damage caused by the first leaks
Wiring the bathroom light
Fixing the wiring in the upstairs room
Painting the house
etc.

Some of it will also go towards paying the taxes on the funds.

For those who own a home, you'll probably notice that our list is long for 10K. If the money goes over, the money would still be used towards getting the house in livable, then sellable condition. If it's under, we will handle things in dire need first.

Of course we prefer not to just be handed money. Michelle also has an etsy store, and sells art.  We are happy to go that route as well.  She cannot take on many detailed commissions because we currently rely on the regular income from that time spent making gryphs so couldn't realistically give a reasonable deadline since it couldn't be prioritized. Smaller projects might be a go, such as pet portraits. She'd be happy to discuss work that is already created though, or custom size prints, etc.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Any help right now would be invaluable, thank you for your time, anything you can give, and anywhere you can share this. If you'd like to contact us directly with support rather than through here, you can contact me at coureton@gmail.com.

Thank you.

Coureton, Michelle aka. The Lady of the House, and Gabriel aka. The Critter.

Quick Hit: It just keeps snowing, and thoughts on "real" homesteading.

I really liked this photo from last post, so I decided to re use it for today. I'm running late on everything today because it's snowing more every day, which means I have to be clearing snow constantly. It's just part of life, but when you're at work during the day and are helping with baby care, and animal care isn't able to be compromised, you lose time somewhere. For me, it's lately been either the blog or sleep. In this case, it's the blog And sleep! The topic for today though is prompted by Cold Antler Farm's blog. Read more below the cut.

Yesterday there was a post on the Cold Antler Farm blog about someone who was upset with her for not being a "real" homesteader because she accepted help. Take it a read through, and if you enjoy this blog you'll probably enjoy hers.

My thoughts:
Homesteading is not, and can not be a solitary endeavor. By the very nature it is a community activity. I'm sure there are people who do nothing else, have no debts, and can manage to consistently survive without outside assistance, but that's their whole life. For most of us though, we can't produce the tools, all of the feed, every thing we need. We're going to rely on the people and community around us to shore up where we're short. She covers this well in her blog post, so I'll leave her words to do so.

Failure does not negate:
One of the particular things that stuck out to me was that the person who is stopping reading her blog said that she's no longer a real "homesteader" because of her lack of preparation for winter and reliance on that assistance from others. I think that's particularly silly. Not everyone succeeds all the time, and a failure or inability doesn't negate being something. If we suddenly needed to eat without outside assistance for over about 3 weeks we'd be in trouble. Before that our animals would be in trouble because we'd be out of feed within a week between chickens and rabbits. I've discussed what Homesteading is to me before so I don't think I need to discuss that again.

I guess this comes down to, I feel that what you aim for is more important than whether you always succeed at it. We may not always manage to do what we aim to do, but that's ok. I think that much like ethical eating, small steps are better than none at all. And is it really failure to be prepared if you manage to cope through help from others?

Tuesday I'll be back with more significant content and a more coherent brain!

More snow, a less benign visitor, and maybe mites.

I figured I could get away with a little shameless use of one of the best photos we yet have of the Critter and I because it's a snowstorm photo. As those of you in the area know, we got a lot of snow yesterday. We seem to have made a tradition of getting the photos of the Critter in the snow. We can call this one his 3 month picture. As a side note, as I grew up in the far South of the USA in Texas, I never expected to find myself comfortable outside in near zero degree Fahrenheit weather without a jacket, heavy gloves, and a face covering. Now I'm out there consistently in what you see with waterproof work gloves and actually shortly after this photo went out and cleared the driveway. Very different than I was 5, or 10 years ago.

But, that said there's a lot that's been going on around the homestead over the past weekend so let's talk about some not so benign visitors, chickens, snow, and bread. The bread is simple, I baked 10 loafs of sourdough bread in one day. I recommend not doing double batches of dough, it's Much harder to knead a double batch than two single batches. I don't have pictures of this mass of bread, but next time I make bread I'm planning to make a walk through on how I've started doing sourdough.

Quiet snowy day, and Sourdough Mk. I and Mk. II

As most of you probably know, snow was the call for today in New England, and we were prepared for a serious storm. So far, we only have about 12" of snow which is very pleasant compared to 2'+ of snow. The wind has been fairly significant, but I'm not going to complain at the difference between an exhausting sort of storm, and simply one where staying home and being safe is a wise choice rather than an absolute necessity. Before I discuss the snow further though, I have some bread to discuss! Sourdough to be precise.

Arctic chill after wintery mix

 We're back in the new year, and we got a reminder that the bad part of winter comes after the solstice from nature. This was in the form of probably the worst form of winter precipitation for our location other than simple sheets of ice falling from the sky. It's something that is very familiar to locals, and I've heard is unusual outside of this area. Wintery Mix, aka snow/slush/rain/sleet all in one. So, in short, all of that white in the photo isn't just snow, it's basically solid(ish) ice.

Critter, and sustainability as we learn to be parents.

Today I'm going to talk a little about having a small person while being involved in this homesteading lifestyle, and thoughts about sustainable living and having an infant. The first thing I'm going to note is that especially as relatively low income working parents, sustainability is frankly going to be the first thing to go out the window if it starts being a problem. Given how we are handling the Critter though I think that won't be a problem. We're doing cloth diapering which I'm finding is actually really easy, partially because cloth diapering isn't the same as it was in the nebulous past. Using cloth diapers is a good first step on being sustainable with an infant. I think though, that the big thing we're doing that is sustainable in terms of critter care is that very little of what we have in terms of clothes, toys, and baby care stuff is new. Most of it is hand me downs, leftovers, and the like. Babies use things for 3 months at the outside before you need a new size, so why would we buy primarily new when there is plenty in excellent to near new condition out there not being used right now. Due to some wonderful friends, and an excellent community we didn't end up having to get much. In our hilltowns area there is an idea I like called the Country Closet that facilitates this. It is a place for folks to leave un-used baby clothes, toys, diapers, and furniture, and others to pick it up when they need it. Sort of a local store of baby things. Our plan is to give what people we directly know need to them, and put the rest in the Country Closet. I think on both a community and sustainability aspect these community resource sharing centers are important.

One of the things that has occurred to me as I've been thinking about sustainability, homesteading, and a baby. Other than the necessary increase in resources for having an infant, just going on as we have been and trying to reduce what we buy and increase what we produce is going to be the way. Obviously we're having to spend more fuel to keep the house warmer than the often debated 50 - 55 I prefer to keep it. We're going to have to have more food, more clothes, do more laundry, use more water. That is the nature of another person, but if we just make the effort to stay conscious of what we are doing and what we are using I think that continuing to make ethical choices won't be any harder than it already has been in our situation. Especially if we continue working with and being part of our local communities. Offering and accepting support in turn as we have to give, and ask when we need.

Another aspect of sustainability is us the parents being able to keep up what we are doing, and I think that sustaining function is probably a challenge for all new parents. The big one for us has been sleeping, and getting anything else other than infant care done. If it weren't for the help we've been receiving from friends and the Hilltowns Families group the house wouldn't be being cleaned, we wouldn't have clean dishes, and we'd still be tired. As it is what we've been able to maintain ourselves is the animal chores since livestock will be deadstock quickly if not, laundry including the every other day baby laundry, keeping the wood stove going, and that's about it honestly. We've been starting to get somewhat on top of cleaning. We've been really supported in terms of house cleaning, dishes, and just sanity checks that we've desperately needed. As with so much in what we're doing out here, we keep coming back to the community. I feel very fortunate that we'd been starting to get involved in the community before we had a child, we hadn't planned it, but having that support structure is what is contributing to our success on the homestead, and as a family with a new child.

Homestead side, next week I'm going to try to remember to talk about the chickens, the rabbits, and light cycles.

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.

Overdue update

A new day, a new set of baby bunny faces. Well, really right now it's the same set of faces, but as they grow so fast it can feel like a whole new set of faces. Above are three of Twilight's current brood.  Much like their mother they are very engaged with anything involving food. That naturally includes us since we're involved with the appearance of food. I wanted a photo of Twilight hovering over them, but all of them were blurry dark gray mountains that didn't look so good sadly.  Overall, Twilight's kits are growing the crazy rate we expect, and we're happy to see that. Everyone is going to get re bred soon, so they'll only be with their mom for another few weeks for which she will be profoundly grateful, the're eating her food!

A rough weekend of learning led to some hard thinking.

 It's been a rough few days up the hill. The temperatures have been low, and we've continued getting on and off snow since Wednesday. There's been good things and bad things happening, and it's caused me to think a bit. So the facts first, then I'll talk about what I've been thinking about.

Twilight's litter is doing very well, though she is still very aggressive and scaring me when I go to check on them. We've come up with how to cope with her finally which is put up a barricade using the granite tile that we use for cooling in the summer, put the kits in a box and take them elsewhere to weigh them. When we come back put them back as quickly as possible before she knocks down or jumps over the barricade and get away. She hasn't managed to injure me since the first weight check, but I'm a bit gun shy at the moment with her, and very much not taking risks. As you can see from the photos her babies are gigantic, and moving around much earlier than they should. The litter average is 20 grams over the litter averages of previous litters. The biggest one is 195 grams which is positively massive, and all of them are doing well and quite large. One of the challenges with them is they are already moving around with some facility which means we have to be careful weighing them beyond worry about Twilight assaulting us.


This picture quite nicely shows Twilight in protective mode. What it doesn't show is the growl she produces when we're even near the babies side of the hutch these days. She is calming down to an extent but she is making our lives quite difficult on her side of the isle. Most mother rabbits generally try to ignore where their babies are when they aren't feeding them. She is nothing like that going in to check them if we so much as look at or touch that side of the hutch.

Unfortunately there is no such good news when it comes to Dawn's litter. Her babies are still hovering around 65 - 75 grams, those that are still alive. We've lost 6 of 10 so far. The first one died because it fell out of the nest at some point over the course of a night and was dead by the time we got back. Three died when ice popped open a seam on the hutch and poured melt water from the snow finally starting to melt from the roof in to the nest. The Lady of the House and I spent 3 hours Sunday morning before I went in to work struggling to re warm as many of them as we could. When I got home from work around Midnight they were all still alive, but Monday afternoon another was dead on the wire from having held on to the nipple too long and being dragged out of the nest. Today we came out to the second biggest kit dead and cold in the nest, and the others barely hanging on. At this point we may have dropped below the critical mass point where they can't stay warm in the nest no matter what without us helping by putting in hot water bottles. I'm not sure if the ones that are left would be able to grow up to full sized rabbits even if we do manage to get them growing again at this point since they're basically the same size they came out, just with some fur.

Obviously this is what has gotten me thinking. There are a lot of difficult things about Homesteading between keeping motivated, the physical labor involved, planning, handling the ever changing world and what she throws at you. With animals one of the difficult things is killing and butchering these animals you've raised from being babies. That's been particularly tough for me and after every time I kill one of our rabbits I wander around disquieted for a couple of days. Despite that it is something I can handle knowing that the other choice is to eat food from unethical sources, or not be able to afford to eat in a way I'm comfortable with.

This is the first time though that probably the most difficult part of animal husbandry with homesteading really hit home. In Homesteading you have to make decisions all the time, and sometimes they will be wrong. With plants it means you're short or lacking on harvest. You're the one who suffers. The same with many things in homesteading. With raising animals when you screw up the animals suffer. Our wrong decision was to breed for mid March. Most places say it should be ok, and last year it would have been fine. Unfortunately this year as of today we have 12" as our base depth of snow with drifts substantially higher. Saturday morning we had 18" as base snow depth, and that melt combined with insufficient building on my part  what killed most of Dawn's kits. So now we get to learn from our mistakes.

Dawn's stressed and concerned about her babies. She's been very listless, and I think the stress has actually been making her less and less able to care for them. I'd initially planned to foster two of Dawn's kits to Twilight, and didn't end up doing so in what now looks like a not so good choice. At this point it's past the 5 days that it's recommended not to foster beyond, and Twilight is very aggressive about policing her nest. We're at a point where we have to decide what to do about Dawn's kits, and I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point. It definitely motivates me to build hutches in the chicken coop so if anything like this happens again they can be in a place that's at least warmer. And next year we won't breed this early for certain! This afternoon when we get home we will see if any are alive, and if they are we will decide then how to handle the remaining kits, and we will let you all know Thursday.

For feel goods, Twilight's litter in a clementine orange box.

Checking in with the rabbits

There are some very comforting norms for us when coming out to greet the day and our rabbits. One of them is this, Twilight informing us that she has never once in her life been fed. Just like yesterday before we gave her food, and the day before. The Lady of the House wasn't able to quite get the degree of athletic desperation that she displays, but it at least gives an idea. She will regularly cling to the side of the hutch, and do flips off the roof. She is convinced that her mostly hay diet is killing her, positively killing her. She is of course on this diet for her own good since she has something of a sensitive gut to the very nutrient rich diet that is an all pellet diet. She doesn't see it the same way.

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.

Our first rabbit dinner, Tanning, and Growing Babies

Life has been very busy lately between this, that, and the other thing happening in addition to our day to day routine. Going to check up on the rabbits every morning has become something of a calming ritual before greeting the inevitable insanity of the day. Seeing the babies had opened their eyes yesterday morning was a nice thing to wake up to.

First Butchering Done

Yesterday we did our first butchering, and over all it went very well. We have one of the first two litters we are holding aside for potential breeding to bring Sunny's strengths into our American Blue lines if we can. As you can see Above he is still in the growing out hutch, and seems to be enjoying being able to eat without fighting off everyone else.

There are no photos of the process below the cut but there will be detail about the killing and butchering process.

The State of the Garden

Michelle in today, Coureton's putting in long hours and couldn't write the post.

We're still waiting on the next two litters of bunnies to be born, both Sunny and Dawn are very large.

In the meantime, the first litters are ever larger by the day (except when the bear visits, which stopped last week out of the blue...hopefully for good?)  here the Himi demonstrates how not to do weight checks.  She actually turned out to be our most out-going and friendly baby so far, surprising as she's out of Sunny's litter who otherwise are quite skittish. She loves to be the center of attention, even over food.

Does this make my butt look big?

We've had our first fight--very minor injuries and some fur fluffs only.  Coureton and I treated them with hydrogen peroxide and neosporin-one rabbit had a bite to the ear which started healing within hours.  Both babies involved were from Sunny's litter, which is a week younger than Dawn's so unexpected.  One was licking the wounds of the other in what seemed to be a gesture of friendship--I'm not sure what happened.

Preparations For Litter 2, and Reality Reminder

Dawn has begun nest building preparations for her second litter as of this morning. When the Lady of the House went to put hay in, Dawn was so eager for it she was taking hay from the Lady of the House's arms. We were a bit surprised by this turn of events needless to say, given that this is day 24 of her pregnancy, and we wouldn't be expecting kits for 4 more days.

General Update

Well, looks like I forgot today was Thursday. I have no new photos for you today, and nothing at all even vaguely planned too write. So instead I'll do a quick run down of where we are and our plans for the near future.

Kits Open Their Eyes, A New Birth, And The First Luna Moth

An eventful last week all around including assisting with graduation at the school the Lady of the House works at. On the homesteading front, the lady of the house has been working on growing herbs, and for the most part they are doing well, though we just can't seem to keep the Dill alive. The babies are growing well though, and Dawn's babies opened their eyes over the weekend. They are getting very active and inquisitive.  As you can see below, even the smallest of the litter is very active, and looking like a baby rabbit now.

Baby Growth, and the Bear

We've had a lot going on this week in the homesteading department, the baby rabbits being the obvious major part of that. The other part of what has been going on is that on Saturday we got a bunch of herbs, some vegetables, and some grape vines and planted them. I don't have pictures of what we planted, nor do I even remember exactly what all we planted since that was mostly the Lady of the House's project. I just know we've got a good number of cooking herbs growing, and 4 grape vines planted in the side of the hill. The babies are getting tough to take good photos of because of how much they move.

No Baby Bunnies Yet

I was holding off on writing a post in hopes of getting photos this morning of baby rabbits in the nest. Unfortunately that isn't yet the case, or at least wasn't when the Lady of the House and I left this morning for work. Instead, Dawn is still rotund and grumpy, and the nest is still empty.  So instead of pictures of pink baby bunnies, and likely a bleeding hand from trying to move Dawn, here is Dawn in all of her joyful glory. Below the cut are pictures of the nest.

Book Review: The Backyard Homesteading Guide to Raising Farm Animals

The lady of the house suggested that I do a review on some of the books that I've been reading for homesteading since I didn't have photos ready for a new post at the moment. Rather than flailing around for something last minute that I don't know enough about I decided that was a good idea. I decided to start with the first book that I picked up for this particular project, "The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals" edited by Gail Damerow. This book is well written, extensive, and easy to find information in. Of all of the books on homesteading it is one I would strongly recommend for those looking to raise animals in their homesteading projects.