It's been a bit since the last post, and a lot has happened on the homestead as well. With the end of the winter comes the time to prepare for the upcoming year. Seeds need to be started. Garden beds need to be prepped. And, of course, babies need to be born!
We have been working on many of these things and I am getting excited for the upcoming growing season. First off, we started more seeds than we ever have before. The previous year, I tried starting seeds in our garage to keep the mess out of the house. We have plans for a greenhouse in the future, but for now, I have a shelving rack wired up with grow lights on a timer. It does the job well, but I don't do the job as well when it is far away and hard to get water to. So, last year, we got a late start on many of our plants. This year, however, I'm happy to say that the plants are all coming along very nicely!
We also have done some prep on the garden beds. We spread bunny poo everywhere to fertilize well. We put together a cattle panel tunnel for climbing plants, and we put down some mushroom spawn in the walkways and covered it with woodchips so that we can even get production out of the spaces between beds!
The bunnies are producing in full swing now as well. We have 8 regular breeders, and had a few mom's with really big litters. We have since sold some but there are still a lot of rabbits to take care of. Luckily, they're easy, and even if they weren't, they're cute!
If you've read some of the previous posts, you'll know I was working to produce harlequins and tri-colors, and I finally have a few to show off. Lilly, our only tri-color, produced two chocolate otters, a black/orange tri-color, and a blue/fawn tricolor. And to improve our breeding stock and our chances of producing tri-colors, I picked up a new buck. His name is Rabsctuttle (from Watership Down). Rabscuttle's coloration is known as Magpie. Basically, he is a harlequin that also has the chinchilla gene to turn all of his lighter colors into white. He's a super pretty bunny, and I can't wait to see what his babies look like. Keep an eye out for pictures in a few months!
Finally, I'm trying a new experiment as well. I wanted to try out colony-raising rabbits, but I couldn't just do it the easy way and start a colony on its own. Instead, I decided to test two ideas at once and put a couple of rabbits in with my chickens and ducks. I put in Carrots and Panda, a buck and a doe. It's been a couple of weeks since I put them in there together and so far I haven't had any issues. Some of the ducks sometimes pick on them, but the rabbits are so quick, that it's not an issue. All of the animals in there mind their own business and stick mostly with their own kind. I'm excited to see how kindling goes with this set up though. I'll report back when I have updates.
Is there anything you want to know about the homestead? Let me know in the comments below!
