Quick Hit: The last rabbit kill.

Forgot to get the photos for today, so instead I'm just going to do a quick post, after all, this particular post doesn't really need any new photos. Last night I did the last butchering of rabbits that's going to take place here on the homestead. It was a killing that needed to happen, but I still am glad that it's the last one unless I'm going to be teaching people.

Herbie was the last rabbit on the homestead because he wasn't a rabbit we could let move on to another home. We'd tried to give him almost 6 months to recover from the back leg problems he was having, but he never did recover. It seems he may have injured his spine while playing and jumping around in the hutch, and just never was able to move properly after. It's a thing I've been putting off hoping he'd magically get better and we'd be able to pass him on, but it just wasn't happening.

Physically, skill wise, it was one of the easier killings I've done. Both of us were calm, and the physical process went perfectly. On an emotional level, it just confirmed that we made the right choice not to do rabbits anymore even if we were going to be able to stay in the homestead. The question now is, how do I continue to eat ethical meat, and stay healthy? Mostly, by eating less meat, and only buying from ethical sources.

But to be honest while we're in the process of selling the house and under financial duress, we're probably going to have to compromise and just eat what we can afford, while eating as little meat as we practically can.

Go Fund Me

Checking in on rabbits and potatoes.

There was some interest in how the rabbits are doing after last post, so I figured, especially since I didn't have anything else planned for today, I'd do a check in on the rabbits. Unfortunately most of the photos just didn't come out, but at least this family photo of Splash, Streak, and their kits came out. They eat together like this every day. When there were more kits in there, I had to position the trough so all of them could sit around it, or they'd try to drag it over so they could do that and spill a lot of pellets. The chickens didn't mind that at all, just to be fair.

The photo of Twilight, her daughter, and Twilight's litter on the other hand came out like a blurred mass of ravening animals. Coincidentally, this is about what it looked like in person too. The thing the photo is missing is grunting, a sound somewhat like a gravel crusher in the distance, and the sound of grinding teeth. This group gets plenty of food, but you couldn't convince them of it. If I didn't control their portions this would be a fat group of rabbits really quickly. I've been giving them more greens than pellets lately which is partially to blame for their obsession with the pellets they do get. Right now the adults aren't bred, but that's because of a heat wave. Now that we suddenly have a cold front coming through I'm going to get as many does bred as I can before we get into the August heat. My goal is Splash, Streak, Dawn, Dawn's Daughter, Twilight, and her daughter. I really want to make sure that we get at least someone bred by Herbie. If he still won't breed we have to figure out what to do with him because a buck that doesn't breed, doesn't breathe. We can't just keep throwing food at a non productive rabbit. We may end up taking one of the rabbits in as a house rabbit later on in life, but it wouldn't be him, it would be Dorado who's super friendly. Either way, we'll see what happens with the next round of breedings. The low number of breedings this season due to our other focuses and the odd weather means we're going to be trying to breed later into the fall and early winter. That mostly means more feed because during that time there isn't green stuff to cut and feed to cut  down pellet costs. It may actually work out just fine though.

The other thing that's notable right now is the potatoes that the Lady of the House got into buckets and planted a little while back. For a good starting time they just sat there, and suddenly they started going nuts. As you can see, some are doing better than others for no reason we can discern. We need to get a lot of soil and rabbit manure in those buckets to increase our production with the potatoes. Particularly in the one on the right! I don't know what's going on with that bucket, but I know it's going well. Plans for this weekend are a little off from normal. I'm going to be working overtime at my day job on Saturday which takes up a lot of the normal work time for homestead stuff. We'll see what I can get done Sunday with that in mind, and knowing that I really do need to give the Lady of the House a break from the Critter. See y'all Tuesday.

Learning to better time manage as life shifts.

It's interesting to me that for most of the history of this blog I think that the pictures have featured rabbits first, and everything else later, and yet lately things have been focusing on the garden, or other things. It's not that we haven't been thinking about the rabbits, and nearly as much as we ever have. It's just that we're doing a lot more as well. The garden has been a particular focus because we'd let it go last year much more than we should have, so the weeding has obviously been a priority. Right now we're also starting to figure out what we have too much of that we do want, and need to control. For instance, bee balm which you see above we have a LOT of. If you want some we can absolutely get you seeds or transplants of bee balm. That said, even with everything we've thinking about with the garden, and the chickens life still moves along with the rabbits.

Kits, brooding hens, and planning for an overwhelmingly busy season.

I figured I'd open with a good shot of Dawn's Daughter's kits. Still searching for a name for her by the way so if you have any suggestions pass them on. As you can tell they are doing well. What I don't have is solid weight charts because this weekend was crazy busy, and I neglected to get weights. This morning was also a running way behind day so I don't have them from today either. I'll try to get back to that tomorrow, but no promises since there are some changes going on right now.

Before I move on to everything else though I figured I'd mention that Streak who bred with Remington Steel had her kits. She had 3 big kits, one of whom was born dead. A second of them died Sunday, probably pulled out on the wire still latched on which is unfortunate. With the other deaths in the shared nest with Splash, the nest as a whole is down to  7 between both. Twilight's nest on the other hand is going strong with 7 kits that are doing Just fine as we expect from Twilight. They're big, strong, and move too fast for me to get any decent photos of them to share today for which I am sorry. I'll try to have photos of Twilight's babies for Thursday, but again, no promises.

A busy time to get back in the saddle.

Today on Hillside Homestead, we've been very busy things that are a bit out of the ordinary. Specifically the Lady of the House is preparing for selling her art, and a new genetics centered collectible/game at Anime Boston. I also had a wisdom tooth extracted yesterday which is somewhat distracting as well. The up shot of that is, no new photos for today which I've been really trying to keep from happening since I've been trying to make sure to give the blog the attention it deserves consistently. I also wanted to take a moment to do a monthly mention of the Patreon and Amazon Wishlist links off to the right, and thank everyone for reading, and their support.

Below the cut I'm going to be talking about getting back to breeding rabbits, and thoughts about that.

An oops, and starting to look ahead to what we should seed start.

As usual, it is expected to be snowing today. At least today it's expected to be a light snow with only a couple inches. While that is certainly it's own variety of frustrating due to the difficulty of clearing it when I can clear it at all, this time I am glad for a break from the heavy snow that we've been seeing lately. While this isn't an excessive amount of snow for a winter, getting it all at once isn't my favorite method. It's going to be very cold again for the next couple weeks which is to be expected for this time of year.

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.

Tracks, scat, and wildlife visitors.

It is lovely to be keenly aware of just how much more daylight we're getting as I'm out and about in -8 degree weather feeding and caring for the animals. Just being out and about at the same time every day gives a lot of connection to understanding time as the light changes. There are times I think that having flood lights around the house to get more done in the dark hours would be good. Then I remember that doing night time construction in below freezing weather isn't fun or terribly productive anyhow. One of the things that light showed me this morning though, was tracks from some of our visiting wildlife in the wake of the storm.

Recipe: Rabbit in milk

I got adventurous last night and tried modifying a recipe to use with rabbit. Jamie Oliver has a Chicken in milk recipe that looked interesting to me, so I figured I'd give it a shot with rabbit. Of course I had to modify it a bit because of a few things. One, I forgot to thaw the rabbit meaning it had to be cooked from a frozen rabbit, and two, I'm unable to do a recipe as written for cooking from what I can tell.

Ingredients:
1 large or 2 small rabbits
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 stick butter
1 stick cinnamon
A hand-full of dried sage
2 lemons
1 full bulb of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
1 quart milk

Method:
Due to not having thawed rabbits I couldn't brown the chicken in the oil before mixing everything else together. With a thawed rabbit, brown the outside of the rabbit in oil while pre-heating the the oven to 375F (190C).

Mix all of the ingredients together in the pot so it fits fairly closely together, and cook with the lid closed for ~1.5 hours basting with the juices in the pan when you remember to. I did it a couple times and actually turned the rabbits when I did so. Remove from the oven, and serve on or off the bone with mixed greens. I think this would be good specifically with rice and broccoli, but we had it with some lightly spiced Brussels sprouts.

This is the recipe that has tasted the most like roast chicken of any recipe I've managed with rabbit. The milk leads to the flesh being very tender, and the lemon with cinnamon gives it an interesting core flavor in addition to the taste of the meat itself. Served with some of the curds from the milk separating due to the lemon it is really delicious. I under salted and peppered it which is easy enough to fix post cooking, and I'd probably do it that way again.

I am incredibly frustrated with myself right now though, because after eating last night I was so tired I remembered to bring in the water bottles from the rabbits, and an extra load of wood for the wood stove, but I forgot to put the rabbit away. We got 2 servings out of a probably 16 serving dish of really delicious rabbit. The rest of it is now feeding the chickens because I was careless.

I'm looking forward to trying this recipe again, and I'd probably add some ground cloves to it for a really New England fall flavor.

A case of winter wildlife

We've got a lot going on around the homestead, but the thing that I feel like talking about right now is our wildlife visitors. First things first, deer. None of the photos in this blog today are from the wildlife cam, they're taken by the Lady of the House with a camera because they were close enough to do so.

Rabbit update

I realized I haven't given any updates on the rabbits lately. Mostly the rabbits are doing well, and the teens are still hanging around because I haven't had time to kill and butcher them. I'm fairly certain I'm not going to have time to take care of that any time soon no matter how much it needs to be done so I am going to be asking a friend to do it for me since I am constantly exhausted and busy.

Dawn's kits, and still waiting.

Dawn gave birth Tueseday night, and when I got home I reached in and felt around. I felt a couple moving kits, and Dawn was unhappy with what I was doing so I left her alone, and checked again in the morning. When I checked then I found one cold and dead normal kit, one dead kit with the back of it's head missing and the brain showing, and two normal healthy kits. The rabbit with the part of the skull has anencephaly which means a large part of the brain or skull missing. The Lady of the House promptly did some research, and found that there may be some correlation between tomato blight, and the kinds of birth problems we've been seeing. There is some correlation between feeding alkaline plants and the kind of problems that we've been having so we want to do more research into that.

A very productive weekend

This weekend we got a huge amount done around the house and have a lot to thank people for. Unfortunately in the press of getting things done and the business of everything else at the beginning of this week I don't have any photos to share at the moment for which I apologize. So for now I'm going to list what got done because I'm a bit tired still from this weekend and early week. All of the work from Saturday was done by a group of people that I thank very much for their time and work. Also below the cut, further crazy use of our poor Fit.

Times of transition, preparation, and change.

Sorry for the late post today, I didn't get things done last night, so I had to wait for having breaks at work to get things done, and the Lady of the House was kind enough to get me some photos to share with you all. Right now is sort of an awkward time as we among other thing wait for the last litters of the year to be born, continue to try to breed Twilight, and the garden dies down. Digressing for a moment, let's talk about Twilight before we get back to everything else

A merry chase

I figured today was a good day for baby bunny photos, unfortunately I forgot that when trying to get photos on a rainy day you A: need to be out of the woods, and B: a corollary, you need a second pair of hands. The Lady of the House is out of town right now since she was selling at Otakon this past weekend. This promptly led to a game of find the blue gray 2 week old rabbit in the tall grass and raspberry bushes. Before doing the cut, I assure those of you who just came for the baby bunny photos, all turned out well, and no babies were harmed, and there will be more (well, one more) photo below the cut.

Quick hit: Rabbit apple experiment

There is more going on than just a recipe, but I haven't been able to get photos, or much free time either, so for now, a quick hit with a recipe I tried out last night. As usual, this isn't so much a recipe as an experiment where I slammed ideas together and saw what came out.

Idea 1: Applesauce
Idea 2: Sweet and spicy rabbit
Idea 3: We've got some Salami in the fridge, not sure how long it's been there but it's still good. Let's use that!

Materials:
1 rabbit butchered into sections. Ideally it would probably be boned, but I cut the heck out of myself while sectioning it, so I didn't go all the way.
1 lb carrots chopped medium
1 hard salami cubed small
2 lb (ish) cubed apples. I used random seconds from the farmers market for this.
5 limon peppers
2 sticks cinnamon
small handful cloves
cilantro to taste
small handful basil leaves
small handful rosemary
dash chili powder
other spices to taste

Method:
Brown the rabbit on medium heat. Remove from the pot.

Put 2/3rds of the apples in and put the rabbit back on top. Put all of the spices in. Simmer over low medium heat stirring from time to time for about 45 minutes. Put the rest of the apples in, and continue simmering for another 30 minutes.

Put the salami and the carrots in, and simmer for another 20 minutes.

Let cool a little before eating. Honestly, it's best the day after as with most recipes that involve a lot of spice mixing.

Results:
The rabbit is so tender it's falling off the bone, the spice level is good for us but definitely has a good solid kick with enough sweetness to still stand out. The smokiness of the salami was a fortunate and really good addition to it because the day after the smoky flavor has blended the rest of the flavors very well. Over all it isn't so much like apple sauce as it really is a meal when served with some sort of starch.

Sorry for the absence, it's been a hairy couple weeks.

It's been a rough couple weeks, and I'm sorry for missing not one, but two posts in a row. Unavoidable travel occurred, and left me with barely the energy to do my job and the around the house work that needed doing. Fortunately, as the song says, we get by with a little help from our friends. Above is the fatigued crew that helped out with moving and re stacking 7 pallets of firewood for the winter, and helped out more which I'll cover later. A thanks to them is the first thing.

Rabbit Curry and growing squash as we live in waiting.

 I hope life is treating everyone well on what is a rainy day of weather transition here. We are doing fairly well, and glad to see rain since it's best to not water if possible, and with the regular rain we haven't been having to water often unlike earlier in the year where we were having flood then no rain for weeks.

Out of meat.

There are a lot of things going on right now with food politics, and our life in general. Topics range from the Ag Gag bills that are going around to the Monsanto case being seen in the supreme court, and of particular interest to us bills proposing that rabbits be banned from being eaten since they are a popular pet. Right now though, our focus is preparing to butcher this round of babies.

Rabbit ginger recipe, and preparing for the snow storm

For those of you not in the New England area, you may not know that a major storm is approaching. Right now our primary concern is preparation for the impending storm. How much snow we will get is up for grabs, but we are going to assume it will be on the upper end of two to three feet.

What does that mean for us? Well, mostly it means get ready to shovel and snow blow. The snow blower has a full tank, and we are getting a full extra gallon of gas just to be certain. We are considering buying another extra gas tank to fill up just to be safe. We are going to fill up our sand buckets this evening so we have that available, and load up the inside wood rack with the wood outside that is most exposed to weather so the less exposed wood isn't going to be in danger of getting soaked. I'm hoping to be able to go in to work tomorrow, but that looks unlikely to be honest depending on the snow amounts.

Above is a photo I'd wanted to share from the gifting of the box to the babies. This is one of the babies rubbing its chin on the box, claiming it. Rabbits, like cats have scent glands in their cheeks and like marking things. That was moments before the box destruction began.

One of the things we have been doing a lot lately is experimenting with various things. Some of them are really good, but not terribly exciting and covered all over the internet, like wheat berries. Great breakfast food if you can get them, and very nutritious. More interesting is recipe experimentation, and as usual we are awful about remembering to take photos of the food before we eat it, so instead,here is a picture of a rabbit staring at the camera in confusion.

Recipe: Rabbit ginger
Ingredients:
1 Fryer weight rabbit butchered out

Marinade:
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
3 Tablespoons honey
3 Tablespoons clear alcohol. We used hard cider, you could also use sake or other similar alcohol.
1 Tablespoon grated fresh ginger.
Other spices to taste.
I used:
2 generous pinches tarragon
1 generous pinch chipotle

Mix all of the marinade ingredients in a medium mixing bowl thoroughly. A whisk works best, but a fork would also do the trick. Once they are thoroughly mixed, place the pieces of rabbit in the bowl and coat them fully with the mixture. Ideally the mixture will nearly completely cover the rabbit as it sits in the bowl. Place the bowl with the marinade and the covered rabbit in the fridge for 30 minutes. During this time I'd recommend starting rice if you will be using it as the starch.

After 30 or more minutes heat a medium sauce pan so it is hot, but not oil smoking hot and coat the pan with the oil of your choice. You probably won't need more than a tablespoon. Once the pan is hot and coated take out the rabbit, and brown each piece on both sides in the pan. When you do this just take the rabbit piece by piece, and put it down. As you brown it you should also be caramelizing the marinade on it. Don't cook it, just brown each piece and remove it, placing it on a plate to the side. Don't crowd the pieces in the pan, or they won't probably brown.

Once all of the pieces are browned and set aside put 3 tablespoons of water in the remaining marinade, and place all of the rabbit and the marinade in the medium sauce pan over low medium heat to finish cooking the rabbit. This should take 15 - 20 minutes if you cook it slowly, basically simmering it. Check the thickest piece of rabbit to make sure it is cooked fully before serving.

I recommend serving with rice, broccoli, and maybe some sweet potato. This is the best rabbit recipe I've come up with yet. Obviously it takes heavily from terriyaki and ginger chicken recipes, so if you have anything similar you've tried that you know works well, pass it on!