Farm Life

Our little farm has been growing again.

Our best brooder hatched out one chick a couple weeks ago, and then a week later, adopted nine chicks that we hatched in an incubator. Surprised us that she took them in so easily, but it makes it so much easier for us to take care of the chicks.

Then last week, we had another hen hatch out four more chicks (she hatched three earlier this spring).  We're up seventeen chicks this year and we added a beautiful Black Copper Maran rooster.

The third of our goats had her kid.

That birth was another first for me. Baby decided to come out nose first instead of feet first, so I had to help mama birth the shoulders.

Sweet Pea approves of Bella

We have one more mama goat waiting to give birth. In one year our little herd of three goats has grown to nine!

Our rabbits continue to give us cute little babies. We're waiting on two of them to have kits right now.

I wish I could say that our garden was growing as well as our animals, but I can't. With all the rain we've been getting, the garden is soaked. The plants haven't been washed away, but they haven't been growing as quickly as they should.  Hopefully we'll dry out soon =)

The Misadventures of Raising Rabbits

Last spring, Sarge decided that we should start raising rabbits.  Pretty good idea, right?

Once we figured out the ins and outs of the breeding and figuring out how to keep the kits alive, we figured it would be smooth sailing.

Until you wait too long to cull the delinquents and are greeted with this:

And now with the two planned litters, we have about 35 bunnies...

Meet the Newest Addition...

Late on Thursday afternoon, we figured it was time.  So we contacted Mrs. Barbara to let her know we were ready.  Everything was set and ready to go.  We were just waiting on the delivery.

Sunday afternoon the truck pulled up the driveway and we saw our newest critters =)

Without boring you with the rest of the details, I give you  Billy (goat) Madison, Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee.

What, you thought this post was going to introduce you to the newest member of Kid 4ce?

We also had a hen that hatched out 8 chicks.

They're a cute little bunch.  Little fluff balls running around in the brooder.  In a few weeks they'll be joining the juvenile delinquents we hatched out after Easter.

Three of them hiding in the brush and eating bugs.

We getting closer to our goal of being self- sustaining around here.  The only thing we haven't been too successful at is getting our garden going.  But, that will take time.  It's hard to get the gardens going when the soil is rocks and clay =)

Our Little Farm...

continues to grow.

In the last few weeks we've added rabbits 

Hello bunny 

We have 4 New Zealand whites.  They're not the friendliest right now, but are finally starting to come out of hiding when we're in the pen with veggie scraps.

And we've added four ducks.

Sweet Pea had to keep Muttley from jumping in with the ducks.

And, of course, before we could move the ducks out into a bigger pen, I had to build them a house.

And we're hatching out some more chickens.

Just a few should be hatching around Easter =)

And, on top of everything we're doing with the animals, we're also experimenting with some of the local plants.  Last fall we played around with prickly pear fruit (jelly and wine) and this spring we tried some red bud jelly.

Yes, the same red bud trees you see all over in the spring.

Isn't it beautiful?  It has a wonderfully sweet flavor that is a cross between an apple and a plum.

And, since the red bud worked so well, we thought we would try violets.

The petals have to soak for 24 hours, so it'll be tomorrow before we can see if it works =)

As if that wasn't keeping me busy enough, I'm continuing to get my runs in and am looking forward to my marathon at the end of the month.