Meat Rabbits

I started doing research into raising rabbits for meat.  I recently got into rabbit hunting through my neighbor and my family LOVES eating rabbit.  However, it is cheaper and less time consuming to raise rabbits than it is to raise a beagle.  Plus, I have a food source I can count on, even though I love hunting, I can not count on my ability to hit game or for the availability of game.  I think I have 8 - 10 in the freezer right now from 5 or 6 trips this year.

Looking through Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits, I saw a lattice house that held the rabbits.  I think we are going to build something very similar.  We have an area of the property that is over run by vines and located amongst some small trees.  The vines can grow up the lattice and provide protection from elements and the shed will fit in very nicely with the natural environment.

As far as the number of rabbits, I think we will start with 2 bucks and 2 does.  That should give us 1 meal of rabbit meat each week through the year plus allow us to build/replace our breeding stock.  Right now I'm leaning toward New Zealand or Californians.  Pretty basic rabbits with a body weight of 8-10 pounds.  The manure will be a great addition to our compost, which is mostly horse manure now (left over in the barn from the previous owner).  I still have to research housing facilities, food costs, etc. before we commit to raising rabbits, but right now we are strongly leaning toward it.

Firewood

The weather turned cold, the snow fell, and we ran out of firewood.  Completely out.  I figured we were about 2 cords short when I was cutting over the summer.  So, I cut some of the standing dead trees on our property and that got us by for a few days.  My neighbor told me that I could have all the dead wood on his property.  Most of that wood looks like it had been lying on the ground for years and is way to rotten.  So we cut a little over there that I knew was good and surveyed the rest.  It looks like there could be 8-12 cords of good cherry and ash.

I began the day deciding to cut down the 8 foot maple stump that was in the backyard.  We cut down the tree 3 years ago and the stump was through the deck, so it couldn't come down until now.  After cutting through, it took the tractor to push the stump over.  Once I got the log cut into firewood length pieces, that's when the fun began.  The logs were too heavy for the tractor to pick up with the bucket, so I brought the log splitter over, however, the logs were to heavy to maneuver under the splitter.  The next option was to cut the logs in half.  That effort resulted in a ruined chain when I hit an embedded nail in the log.  At that point I decided to bring out the old fashioned splitter, a sledge hammer and a wedge.  Another fruitless attempt.

Feeling totally defeated, I gathered everything up and walked away.  I wasted a whole day trying to split 4 maple logs, 40 inches in diameter.  I grabbed my chainsaw, crossed the creek, and started cutting the downed trees on my neighbor's property.  The first logs I cut into were starting to get punky, but still burnable.  Then I found several good loads of cherry and ash.  I carried one 8 foot log across the creek with me on my way back to get the 4-wheeler.  At 6:30 PM, I finally had a load of wood in the house, enough wood to get through until tomorrow evening.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get 6-8 loads cut and hauled across the creek before I start work.

There are two lessons learned today

1. Cut more wood than you think you'll use.  Cutting wood in the snow and cold, when there is no more wood in the house is not fun.
2. Don't overlook the dead trees in the woods.  80% of the logs I cut into that I thought were rotten, were actually solid, seasoned wood. 

Garden Planning

With these spring like temperatures and the arrival of the Burpee seed catalog, I can't help but to think about gardening.  I'll be starting all of my plants from seed again, so that means my gardening schedule starts in a couple of weeks.  I use a method of gardening called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew.  My dad started doing it back in 1989 and had huge success.  In case you aren't familiar with square foot gardening, you basically use raised beds made of 2x6 lumber that are 4 feet square, split the box into 16 sq ft and plant each square foot.  Some vegetables take 1 plant per square foot while others fit as many as 16 plants per square foot.  Last year I had nine 4x4 boxes and two 10x1 boxes, for tomatoes, which produced enough food to feed my family for an entire year plus give a lot away to friends and family.

This year, I'm adding two 12x1 boxes to go on the back side of the garden which will house the cucumbers and possibly winter squash.  I'm also planning on adding wooden walkways between the boxes using the old decking boards from our deck.  The final addition to the garden would be to collect the water off the barn roof and run drip irrigation lines to the boxes set on a timer for morning and evening waterings.  I won't really start any of those projects until the spring, but my spring TODO list just keeps getting bigger.

As for the garden plantings, here is my plan:
144 green beans
144 yellow wax beans
16 bell peppers (last year the plants were 5 ft tall)
4 jalepeno peppers
4 cayenne peppers
4 hungarian hot wax peppers
2 habanero peppers
2 bhut jolokia peppers
256 carrots
1 zucchini
1 crooked neck squash
64 garlic
64 onions
100+ radishes (I plant and harvest one square of radishes each week until July, then again in the fall)
64 beets
64 turnips
12 heads of lettuce
4 squares of leaf lettuce
20 tomatoes (mostly paste tomatoes for sauce)
4 cucumbers
1 winter squash

Weird Weather

It has been in the mid to high 40s the last several days and it looks like spring outside.  I keep thinking about gardening, turning my compost, and getting ready for the pigs to come.  Then I remind myself that the cold weather and snow are coming in a couple of days, so enjoy the weather and take advantage of it to get some stuff done.  So I took the deck off the big tractor and got it ready to move snow.  Although it is faster and easier to move snow with a backplow or the quad, you can't beat the convenience of moving lots of snow with a front loader.  I got the house stocked with firewood for the ensuing cold front that is coming.

Speaking of firewood, it appears that I will be about 1-2 cords short this year.  So I will need to do some cutting in January or February.  Fortunately I have wood on the ground that just needs to be cut.  I just have to get my trailer finished in order to get two cords in one trip.  One thing we've found out is that when you heat with wood, you think about wood ALL THE TIME.  During the winter you are thinking if you have enough, if the house has enough stocked, if you have to put more in the furnace.  The rest of the year you are cutting, splitting, stacking, drying, and taking stock to make sure you have enough for the winter.  You are constantly looking for new sources of wood to cut.  We love how the wood heats the house and how much cheaper it is than if we had to buy heating oil, but it is like having a part-time job.

Start of a New Year & New Blog

I've wanted to document our progress of gardening, raising livestock, food preservation, etc. since we moved into our country home 3 years ago.  I've decided that this is the year to start.  Hopefully over the next 12 months I will update this blog with the progress of our farmette.