Aside from Zander, who I showed you previously, I have picked out a new buck and a new doe from our grow outs. Jasper is a New Zealand white buck with all of the large hindquarters of his grandfather Leo, the personality of his father Starbuck, and the fur quality of his grandmother Serenity, his mother Serena, and his father. He’s also got the larger, unbent ears I’ve been trying for. He is the culmination of what I’ve been breeding for for the past 3 years and is just a love.
Ella is a black doe kit out of Ruby and Starbuck. She has her mother’s personality and long body type and her father’s fur quality and she also has nice hind quarters, though that is more of a fluke. She also has the unbent, larger ears. Honestly her black fur is the number one reason we chose her, though if she had a bad personality, like the gorgeously colored buck kit we had planned on keeping until he got bitey, we wouldn’t have kept her. We want to breed her with our broken buck Zander to try for more brokens.
The younger kits are all growing up nicely. There are 12 between the two litters. I think we’ll have two different butcher batches because the one litter is smaller than the other and will probably take another week or two to hit weight.
The garden is doing really well. I am so thrilled with how much produce we are getting off of it already.
It is really nice to have cut our produce bill down so low already and to know it will continue through the season. I haven’t bought greens in 3 weeks and we actually got some broccoli already.
Gina, the turkey, is no longer limping and her feathers are coming back in nicely on her back now, after months of being half naked, poor thing. Wade’s limp is getting better enough that he is mating with the ducks again. It was bad enough, whatever he did, that he stopped mating them for 3 weeks.
Kalia kindled yesterday. She had just one kit again, but she’s getting old. Luna Blue was due on the 8th and nothing, so I think she missed. I was hoping she’d have a big enough litter I could give Kalia another kit to raise so hers wouldn’t be alone, but it looks like a no-go. I’m not sure why Luna missed. The only other time she missed was with Alex when it turned out he was sick. She had a litter of 6 last time. I think it might be Starbuck, but the four week old kits were all fathered by him. That was before the abscess on his shoulder showed up, though. So maybe his immune system is not doing well. I’ve read that can lead to low sperm count in rabbits.
It will be a while before Zander is old enough to sire kits. Leo is still out of commission due to illness and may never recover. We may very well be putting him down the next time my husband comes homes. We do have a four month old buck that could father kits in 2 more months if we kept him, which I wasn’t planning on. He’s very sweet tempered though and does have all of the qualifications for a good meat buck.
I need to make the decision soon on Persephone and Serenity. Persephone is still young, she just doesn’t seem to be shaking this. Serenity is getting old, but I really like her personality and she seems like she is actually recovering. But I have two doe kits right now that are coming up beautifully and maybe it is just time to stop trying to nurse them through this (it has been months) and replace them. One of the doe kits is Serenity’s granddaughter, but there is no off spring from Persephone, which would mean Phoebe’s line would end. Still, there is Piper’s line and Serenity’s line. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet.
If Serenity and Persephone go, that leaves Luna Blue, Serena, and Kalia as white does and Ruby, Firefly, Bonfire, and Cinnabun as red does. Kalia is pretty much too old to give good litter sizes anymore, so that leaves just six production does. I have thought of getting a red buck or a broken red buck. We’ll see. I don’t like just having one working buck, but Zander will be big enough soon enough.
On the garden front everything is growing well. Almost everything is planted, I am just waiting on cantaloupe for hotter days. We are having a very warm, very good start to the gardening season and I am already harvesting kale, chard, chives, oregano, sorrel, blood-veined sorrel, pak choi, and three types of lettuce. I should not have to buy any greens until October and November at this rate unless the lettuce bolts. The tomato plants are really taking off. Two of the ones in the house are ready for me to start hardening them off for transplant. I will have one Opalka and one Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom for sure. The basil I cloned is doing well, also. This is the first time I have ever cloned basil, so I am happy it worked.
Gina still has not fully recovered from her injuries. She spends a lot of time resting in the nesting box. She hasn’t laid eggs since she got hurt. Turkey eggs are my favorite, but what are you going to do? Her feathers are finally coming back in along her back. It looks terrible, but not as bad as raw skin looked. At least the hawk has moved on. I think George hurt him pretty bad when he tried to protect Gina.
Wade has a hurt leg, too. We caged him for 3 days to force him to rest, but let him into the coop with the rest of the ducks at night. He is walking better, but still limping and still holding one leg up when he stands. No signs of bumblefoot and it seems more like a leg injury than a foot injury. If it starts getting worse again, I will cage him for a full week. But it is hard on him, being a flock animal. He wants to follow the rest of the ducks around. They do stay with his cage part of the day, but it makes him sad when they go away to other parts of the yard and he can’t follow.
I’ve been sick for quite some time and so haven’t really been taking the time to keep up with the blog. I do post on the youtube channel a lot, because that just requires me to talk with a camera and not sit down and actually formulate thoughts. Despite this long illness, I’ve managed to get quite a lot accomplished between now and the last few months of summer.
I’ve filled 3 bookcases that are six feet high with food that I’ve canned, most rows are double stacked and 3 jars deep. I’ve got two more shelves filled with winter squashes and one more shelf filled with home canned food on a 4th bookcase. I feel really good about what I was able to grow this year and more than made my money back on the garden investment.
The rabbits are doing well and I should have 4 does kindling this weekend. I will get some solid reds this time as I did a red doe/red buck pairing. I’ll also get two sets of solid whites and then one set of mixed kits from a red/white pairing. Assuming they all are pregnant. All 4 are nesting like mad, but Luna nested like mad the last two times she missed and Serena did the last time she missed as well. Kalia and Ruby are both showing other signs of impending motherhood as well, though, so I’m pretty sure we’ll at least get the mixed litter and the red litter.
The ducks are finishing up their molt and looking really pretty again. I got 2 eggs today after going a few weeks only getting 1.
My tom turkey George finished his molt and looks gorgeous. My hen turkey Gina is all bedraggled and in the middle of a molt, yet she is still laying. Not sure how that happens as it was my understanding that they don’t lay while badly in molt. Mabye that is just chickens and ducks?
The 3 new pullets started laying couple of weeks ago and now their eggs are up to size. Both Auracanas and the other leghorn are laying, too.
The garden is winding down, but I am still getting herbs, sorrel, kale, chard, celery, and lettuce to harvest. I have broccoli with heads on it growing. I have managed to plant 50 cloves of garlic, though I’d like to triple that. We haven’t had a frost yet, so we still could get the garlic in. I need to clip and transplant my strawberry runners. I do have frost blankets ready to save some things.
I want to build a small hoop house over one of the garden beds and maybe grow a few things over the winter.
We may be taking our son out of high school to home school. We’ll make that decision by weeks’ end. He’s not learning well there. Some of the classes are out of control. He’s frustrated.
Anyway that’s the quick version of what I’ve been up to.
I took 2 days off from canning as I had exhausted myself pretty much with what I have done the past couple of weeks. My son went back to school yesterday, but I think he left his cold with me. I have been fighting it all week and hopefully I won’t go down hard, but I can feel it on the edges. Still, I’ve got to get the next batch of canning done today. I’ve got 3 buckets of ripe tomatoes and 2 more buckets that will probably be ripe tomorrow or the next day and many more still coming. I still have about 18 pounds of potatoes left to can, too. Those can wait if they need to, though. We’ll see how I feel after chopping all those tomatoes.
After I do get to the potatoes, I want to order another 40 pounds to can. Ultimately another 80 pounds. I think that will get us through the year. We ran out of potatoes in June this year and I’d like to go an additional 2 months this time. When I do the potatoes, if there is room in the canner I will also throw in a jar of carrots, since we thinned the Nantes this week.
I am keeping a sharp eye on both the acorn squash, pictured above, and the watermelon, which are both close to being ripe. The weather has really turned on us this week though and is in the 60’s. I hope there is enough heat for the watermelon to finish ripening. I’ve got several big ones that are so close, but the temps aren’t going to go up any time soon. These are supposed to be a short season watermelon, too, Blacktail Mountain.
The cantaloupe isn’t going to make it. I knew it was a risk, since I planted it so late. I will try again next year and plant it much earlier in the season. I think the zucchini is done. I was hoping it would go a little longer, but it really didn’t survive the storm a couple of weeks ago, despite putting out two more fruit. Most of the root mat was pulled up from the wind. We were supposed to have an Indian summer, but I don’t think that is actually going to happen. Especially since the nights have been in the low 50’s and seem to be heading towards the high 40’s.
So this is what my weekly canning looked like:
And my weekly harvest:
I am pretty happy with both. It has been a fantastic garden year.
These birds were smaller than traditional meat birds. We will be letting the rest grow longer since none of them are crowing yet. But for the size that they were, I think we did pretty well. And I am very happy with how much broth we got. I did not end up doing the chicken feet, so all of that broth is just from the breast bones.
I am pretty tired. Besides canning bone broth yesterday, I cooked down and canned spaghetti sauce, and canned carrots and green beans as well. The canner was pretty much going all day, but it feels really nice to have gotten so much done. Of course by the end of the day my hands were barely working from all the chopping. I iced them and they are doing better today.
The next batch of tomatoes I do will only be quartered and put in the blender. That will cut down on some of the cutting. Though I really think it was chopping the carrots and beans which have little give in them that did the damage. Well…actually gutting and cutting up all the chickens last week did most of the damage, but the chopping on top of it made it worse. I am icing them off and on today and using MSM cream, so hopefully they will continue to improve. I’ve never had my hands get so messed up before. But I am able to type without it hurting so I know the inflammation is going down.
My doe Serenity is doing better. She ate the big piece of chard (because it has a lot of moisture in it) and the raspberry leaves (for diarrhea) that I gave her last night, plus half her hay and she drank about 2 inches of water in her water bottle. It’s been about 1 inch in a 24 hour period, so that’s an improvement. Normally she drinks at least half a bottle in 24 hours. She’s still not eating pellets or oats. We will clean her up again this evening and probably give her a little bit more of blu-kote spray on her undercarriage if her skin is still tender. Blu-kote aids healing, has a pain reliever in it, and helps keep diarrhea from sticking to sore areas.
I am thinking about putting Serenity into retirement. We’ll see if and how well she recovers from this. I don’t need her to be a productive doe with 8 other does in the rabbitry. I was hoping to get another year or two of kits out of her, but she really has to come out of this well in order for me to do so.
Well, it looks like there is a break in the weather so I better get outside and harvest what needs harvesting in the garden.
I am doing a lot of preserving, almost every day at this point. I brought in 3 buckets of tomatoes today and a couple quarts of green beans. Still getting zucchini, yellow croockneck squash, zucchini, the occasional peppers, zucchini, and cucumbers. I made a big batch of salsa today, 10 pints. I also made a huge batch of bone broth I will can tomorrow from the 25 chicken breast bones. We still have to skin and roast 50 chicken feet and make bone broth with them as well. That ought to be interesting, but it really is supposed to make the richest, healthiest broth. So are chicken heads, but I’m not there yet.
We cut up all the chickens yesterday that we butchered Thursday. All of the breasts got skinned and cut up into stir-fry meat and tenders. Everything else got divided up into family-sized portions and all of it went into the freezer.
Tomorrow I will be canning spaghetti sauce, carrots, and green beans. It will be a long day in front of the stove, but my husband helps with baby-sitting the pressure canner. I want to get as much done as possible before he leaves on Tuesday night. I still have to lay down a lot when I get headaches from the concussion and the healing broken nose. They are not as bad as they were, but when they come I have to go put an ice pack on my head until they pass. I will be glad when both my brain and my nose heal, because they are really slowing me down.
I took some vegetables over to the neighbor lady today who is so good about our chickens hopping the fence into her wild backyard. We have so much right now and she is really enjoying having some of the overflow. I’ve been also giving some to my physical therapist and my chiropractor. Everyone is so appreciative it really makes me feel good. Not that I do it to feel good, but it does.
We sexed the latest batch of kits today. Out of 11 kits there are 2 girls, 1 in each litter. These were the kits that I bred on the night of the full moon, which supposedly leads to both larger litter sizes (nope) and more females (double nope). We’ll see when the next batch is born and grows up how that goes, but so far all evidence is pointing to it being a whoppingly huge, false old wive’s tale.
We took 3 buck kits from each doe and put them into their own cages. In a couple of days I will remove the remaining boys to my last empty grow out cage. We are going to try to get the 3 kits from the last batch butchered tomorrow as well, which will free up 2 more grow out cages. Probably do that first thing in the morning before we start canning. If not, the girls can stay with their mothers for a little while longer.
Serenity is still not doing very well. Despite being on her 4th day on Corid and Benebac, she is not eating anything but hay and she is only drinking about an inch out of her water bottle in a 24 hour period. She still feels okay, though. Her backbone is well-fleshed and she still comes forward in her cage to be pet when I open the door. But I am worried about her. This is the same thing that killed Piper, Lola, half of Lola’s last litter, and Sweetie Belle. I have also been giving her raspberry leaves which are good for diarrhea in rabbits. She does nibble on those a little, but not enough.
We have to keep cleaning her off and it is a messy, smelly business. If she does not get better after this course of treatment, I think we will have to put her down. I don’t want her to suffer and if she doesn’t start eating and drinking, she will starve and dehydrate to death, which is an ugly way for an animal to die. It will be very hard on me though to lose her. She is a real sweetheart.
We had pretty good results on our Little Finger carrots and the tomato harvest continues to be very good.
After a major wind storm last week the garden is starting to recover from the damages.
The front bed and 3 sisters gardens took the brunt of the storm, though.
I was completely wiped out yesterday after butchering all those chickens on Thursday. They have been sitting in a cooler of ice water since and today we will be cutting them up into pieces and packaging them for the freezer.
I need to go out and harvest tomatoes and green beans today and then make some sauce and some salsa to can. I have canned a lot this week so far, but there is still a lot more to do. It is always quite busy in the kitchen at this time of year, but especially right now with it being such a good tomato year. My pantry shelves are filling up nicely, though I wish I had more space.
I am still waiting on my potato order from a no-spray garden place. Since our potatoes didn’t do very well this year due to how dry it was and we only filled a couple of buckets, I have been ordering some. I have done 20 pounds so far and am waiting on an order of 40 pounds of Yukon Golds. I may have to look for another source since it has been 10 days since I ordered and no results. They were slow before, but it only took 5 days. I want to make sure I have enough jars canned and I really wanted to get in a total of 80 pounds more to put me at 100 pounds of potatoes canned.
We eat a lot of potatoes through the year and I don’t like losing them to spoilage. Canning is my preferred method of storing them. I may have to go with another type of potato, too. I prefer canning the golds, but the reds and russets do okay in canning also. If I have to I will buy them from the food co-op, but that is always more expensive.
I think we may go out to a no-spray U-pick place that usually has potatoes at this time of year as well. My body is pretty messed up for U-picking, but I can manage if I don’t have to get on my bad knees. It is always cheaper than the other options.
The meat chicks are getting bigger every day. Considering how many recalls there have been on chicken products lately I am really glad I am raising my own.
I harvested enough green beans over the past 3 days to can some. I got 4 very full pint and a half jars canned today (so 6 pints). Last year I did them in quarts, but there was always too much and it ended up kicking around in the fridge. Before quarts I did them in pints and it was never quite enough. So hopefully the pint and a half jars (like you’d get for canning asparagus) will be perfect for our needs.
I also got my first cucumber today and another zucchini (up to 6). I roasted zucchini today, but still have 3 left. I am thinking about dehydrating it. I thinned out some more radishes so the rest have room to grow. I have several peppers that are growing now. None big enough to pick yet, but maybe in another week.
I can’t believe how fast the watermelon are growing. They are visibly bigger each day. I am really looking forward to when they are ripe. Long way off still, but they will get there and then I will be rolling in them.
I am making rabbit jerky for the first time today. I really hope it turns out. The dehydrator is proving itself very useful. I hope it isn’t too spicy. I don’t think it should be, I only used 2 tbsp of chili powder in the recipe. I put my fruit leather liner on the bottom tray of the dehydrator to catch any drips from the marinade. The last thing I wanted was a big mess to clean up.
I sold 2 dozen duck eggs today. She brought her own egg cartons so it was $9 instead of $10. Someone is coming to buy turkey eggs soon, probably tomorrow. Playing message tag with them.
It got really hot again today, back in the 80’s and will be again tomorrow, but after that it’ll go back to a much more reasonable low 70’s. I hate these hot days. They are hard on the rabbits, even with fans on them.
I skipped a month of breeding already because of the heat. I was thinking about breeding on the next full moon (which will also be a blue moon), but I’m not sure. I don’t know if August will be better than June and July have been. If I wait another month it’ll be August 29th before the next full moon. Though I don’t think the litters were any bigger breeding on the full moon than not. And we had an equal number of bucks and does, just like usual, so I think the old wive’s tale is just that.
I have had enough calendula flowers to start dehydrating the petals and to start infusing oils for eventual salve making. The process is fairly simple and it took me 6 trays worth of calendula petals to fill one pint jar. So far I’ve got two pint jars infusing in a sunny window. I used sunflower oil for one of them and olive oil for the other. After the six week infusing time is over I will then make some healing salves.
I am impatiently waiting for my comfrey to get big enough that I can dehydrate and start infusing oil with it as well. Both calendula and comfrey are supposed to be quite healing for skin ailments. Because of the cold I have right now, underneath my nose and around my nostrils are just red and cracked skin and nothing is working. And while I hope this does not last for the six weeks it takes the oil to infuse and for me to make my salve, I am hoping that in the future this stuff will help it to heal up when it happens.
It has been in the low 80’s all week and we are heading towards higher temperatures in the 90’s this weekend. We had to put more fans in the rabbit shed as the rabbits were suffering. I have put a case of water bottles in the freezer for them and will go purchase some more ceramic tiles. We don’t have enough for every cage and some of the ones we had have cracked and can’t go in. Tiles are cheap, though, if you get the plain ones (88 cents each) and they help to keep the rabbits cool.
I am a little worried about the pregnant does. They are due this weekend and of course Sunday is going to be in the 90’s. I hope they have them on Friday or Saturday before the temps spike that high. We won’t be breeding again this summer until August. Maybe not until September if August looks to be as bad as July. July is too hot for rabbits to be pregnant all month. I am having to check their water bottles a few times each day as they are drinking a lot more water in this heat.
Definitely on my list when we go looking to buy a farm is a nice shady area for the rabbits, nothing that ever gets full sun for any part of the day. Being under the trees would make a world of difference right now. So would an air conditioner, but that’s not going to happen. I am thinking about making a homemade swamp cooler though. They don’t look too difficult and I think my son and I can do it. My husband is working a week of overtime so I won’t see him until Monday, so no help there. But my son is very good at such things so hopefully we can figure it out.
When Did This Become a Farm? 