So today is day 31 of bunny gestation period and Flopsy was sitting in her nest. She is arranging the straw and appears to be pulling out her fut to make a nest. She is very lazy today we can only hope she is in labor and we will soon have baby bunnies. However, we shall see what happens next.
Yesterday we did some clean up and planted a couple of Buford Hollies around the house.I'm really focusing on simplifying so anything we do not use is going to the dump or to Goodwill. So we've been filling up the
back of Wayne's truck.
I am procrasting on the garden but we have to get this thing under control. Since the twins got here we have not been in the garden. I was surprised to walk out there and find onions, okra & banana peppers were still surviving and producing. I really need to mow between rows and weed the back corner where we grow things in rows and weed out boxes. Sometimes I wonder if life will get back to normal around here?
We have 50 chicks arriving on Wednesday, So Parks will be busy preparing the pool with bedding, food & water and the lights this weekend. We even have a few things to do for our bees too. We still have some more planting to do today, a Camellia and more Hollies (which were on sale!). The garden is over run the bunnies are not producing and my mind keeps drifting to a milk cow or goat. Maybe if we get a goat they can eat all the grass in the garden? Hmmmmm.....
It seems there is always a little something to do around here.Which is good because idle hands are the devils workshop!
Rooster Hill!
So we have had bunnies since about April when Jess & Pearson decided to take them on as a new farm project.We have, however, been unable to breed them successfully to to this point. Flopsy has had litters that have all died.
Breeding attempt 1 Flopsy - The rabbits were born on the wire, fell through the wire (several times) and we put them back in with the rabbit. We put Vicks on the Mama's nose but she never took any interest her kittens. So they all died in less then 8 hours.
Breeding attempt 1 Cottontail - Did not fertilize.
Breeding attempt 2 Flopsy - Flopsy had 1 baby on time and then she had about 6 more babies 2 days later. Rabbits have two uterus so we managed to get both uteri fertilized. This time Flopsy took care of the bunnies for a few days before she abandoned them. Thus, all of these bunnies died within a few days.
Breeding attempt 2 Cottontail - Did not fertilize.
Tonight was breeding attempt 3 Flopsy.
There will not be a 3rd breeding attempt with Cottontail as we sexed the bunnies and determined she was actually a he. So we have tried to breed two males together and we can now confirm this does not work! Oh and by the way Cottontails new name is Bob. Additionally, Bob is for sale on Craigslist so if you need a male rabbit please give us a call!
Sorry we've been absent for so long. But as some of you may know we have been trying to foster/adopt for a while and we had a placement of twins. Frankly, life is still not quite back to normal but it is getting more manageable. Despite all of this activity we have some exciting stuff going on around here including Wayne's new Habanero Peach Hot Sauce, which sold out in less then a week.
I'll try to get everything updated as soon as possible!
RH Farm
We had our debut at the Navasota Farmer's Market this week. Boy howdy did we really learn a lot. Since we had to get up really early in the morning and I had not planned well I did not have my trademark list. That was a mistake so I now have list to remember the little things like Chairs!!!! Because, if you plan on being somewhere from 8-1pm you may want to sit down occasionally! I also wrote a very long list of things to do for our table itself to improve the presentation. Another issues is we were late because all of our things were not well organized the night before. Our location on the strip as a result was not very good because many folks did not even make it down to us! I also noted that I lingered at tables that were cute so the 'cutisfication' of the Roosterhill table is also going to be under way. Finally we need to have everything well and cutely labeled for our customers.
We have some plain jams that need to catch folks eyes and we need to highlight our special Candy Jam. So in the next few weeks I will reveal my Farmer's Market lists, new labels and our new look. We are blessed that Charlie Apel created a really cool logo for us and now I just have to use it. Right now we are planning on going bi-weekly to the market, however, we are going two weeks in a row so we can be at market at the same time as our dear Stephanie.
This week we should also have habanero jam as well as habanero hot sauce! But remember you do not have to go all the way to Navasota to enjoy our products we do have in town delivery to BCS available on Tuesdays.
Though I've not been good at posting we have been busy around here. One of our recent additions is a chicken nursery/Rabbitry which is attached to the shed. This project was built completely with farm funds. We decided that we wanted to add rabbit meat when we seriously slowed our consumption of pork. (Not for religious reasons but because I read a little too much about commercial pig processing and got grossed out by how they are grown. We cannot afford grass fed pork so less pork it was!) We needed a chick house so we could have a system of 3 houses to hold our chickens at different ages and stages because these birds do not get along well together.
Even though Wayne kept saying things like stuff about things need to be level and square I eventually got it built. So over the next few weeks will show you the nursery construction & update you on what's been happening around here. So here is what our shed used to look like before it became a multipurpose building. This was an interesting project like all projects we had a few snags but overall I would say it was a success. We have had about 3 rounds of chicks move through the nursery successfully.
Thanks for coming along on the adventure.
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So today is day 31 of bunny gestation period and Flopsy was sitting in her nest. She is arranging the straw and appears to be pulling out her fut to make a nest. She is very lazy today we can only hope she is in labor and we will soon have baby bunnies. However, we shall see what happens next.
We have 50 chicks arriving on Wednesday, So Parks will be busy preparing the pool with bedding, food & water and the lights this weekend. We even have a few things to do for our bees too. We still have some more planting to do today, a Camellia and more Hollies (which were on sale!). The garden is over run the bunnies are not producing and my mind keeps drifting to a milk cow or goat. Maybe if we get a goat they can eat all the grass in the garden? Hmmmmm.....
