Quick Hit: Rabbit Reflection

Today I'm looking back, and doing a little reminiscing as we come into spring and start rabbit breeding. Three years ago we already had kits on the ground. This year we're starting very late in breeding, but given everything else that makes sense. This year we've been handling a very strange winter, a small person, and hutches that needed serious cleaning. Now that we've done that, we can get started.

Of course, around three years ago we also learned a lesson, one that continued for a few days that has led to us pushing our first breedings back. Of course, we'd meant to breed earlier than this but have just had a lot going on. Interestingly actually the Lady of the House has been making new friends and found someone with an interesting similar experience. She met someone who started doing meat rabbits, and stopped after precisely the same experience we had with Dawn's litter getting killed by the roof springing a leak. It makes me wonder just how frequent deaths due to something like that are in this area.

Of course if everything was hard all the time, and nothing went well we wouldn't have continued, and much like the Lady of the House's friend, we'd have stopped. Instead we have a lot of good time with really cute kits. Of course we also have some really good food too.

All of this reminiscing is to say, breeding starts this weekend. In a month we're going to have new baby rabbit photos to share on the blog at the same time we're also going to be in a waking world of blooming plants, and the early stages of an edible garden.

It's been a hard year, and I'm looking forward to this new spring ushering in rejuvenation of success with rabbits, as well as the earth coming back to life.

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.

Ag Gag and Glass Abattoirs.

Today we don't really have a whole lot to talk about since I went through just about everything that happened over the weekend on Tuesday. Now that doesn't mean that there isn't anything to talk about, just that it isn't the current activities on the homestead. Instead, I'm going to talk about my opinion on Ag Gag laws and my feelings on the distance between people and their food.

Shameless baby photos, and seed saving

 
 Yep, I'm taking advantage of the fact that we have cute babies right now to distract from the lack of serious content right now. I'll talk more about that below the cut.

The Old Adage: Waste Not, Want Not

What happened to that being the norm in the USA? No really, we didn't used to be a country of rampant consumption, in fact it used to be that the government was big into saving, food efficiency, and similar practices. Notice the notation at the bottom, "U.S. Food Administration." For those of you who don't know, as I didn't before doing a little research into it, The U.S. Food Administration was in charge of food and making sure there was enough during WWI. During WWII that was rolled in with other rationing and there wasn't a specific department for it, though most of the food rationing and propaganda came under the US Department of Agriculture. The poster Right in my mind embodies how we should be thinking, though I think use less corn would be an important addition today.

Why Still Pay Attention To Politics

It came to the attention of the Lady of the House yesterday via a community she is part of online that the Department of Natural Resources in Michigan is implementing an order that could lead to small scale farmers being declared felons. The law itself isn't specifically targeting these farmers according to the MDNR, it is targeting feral pigs. However it is defining feral pigs by their physical characteristics, not by whether or not they are loose. If you look up this order from any sort of major news source it is reported as a positive thing, backed by environmentalists and pig farmers both, but a little more research is always a good thing.