Rabbits

Mia

Muckel

Thumper

Snowy and Muffin

Junior and Blacky

The baby rabbits are now close to 10 weeks old. I have separated them from their mom last week and as luck would have it, I ended up with four girls. That made housing them together much easier, and now Snowy and Muffin live together as do Junior and Blacky. Mia looks glad to be on her own again now, as space was getting a bit tight with four bouncing little ones. 
I am now busy planning on how to proceed. I am very pleased with how first time mom Mia dealt with everything, so Mia is definitely staying on as a breeding doe. I am planning to breed her in December or January again but not to sure if I breed her to Thumper again or to Muckel.
Due to Blacky's color, I want to keep her as second doe and breed her to Muckel once she is old enough, which should be in March/April next year

So far the babes are striving and growing quickly and are an absolute joy. They are still a bit shy and jumpy but especially Snowy and Muffin are calming down great already. Blacky and Junior are more active and all four of them are little Hudini's if I turn my back on them while feeding, good thing they can only escape from their cages and not the surrounding area too.

It's fun to see them grow and I can't believe how much I learned about rabbits in those last couple month. I remember how scared I was to do something wrong and accidentally cause death to the babies but also how utterly petrified I was to put my hand in the nest and search for young ones, once it was clear they would be born any day. I imagined they felt like little naked baby mice and I kept quickly poking my finger in, scared to touch anything :) Turns out they are much cuter then baby mice and don't feel squishy or whatever else I imagined them to feel like.

Garden Update

 

These last weeks of August have been very busy… between my day to day job and the garden there was not much time or energy left to blog.

In the garden I have been starting to prepare the soil for fall/winter, taking out the beans and peas so far and planning to plant some strawberry plants at some point this week or next. Last year we doubled the garden space, which meant we had a big pile of grass/soil just standing in the garden. The grass has turned into soil now, so I spend my free time to distribute this soil on the land. Once I start with the strawberries, straw and rabbit manure will be added there too. Now I am building a stone pathway with the left over stones that were piled in the garden and hopefully things will look a bit tidier soon.

The garden is still producing lot’s of cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and as of last week radish again. I also planted another load of garden salad and the kale is growing slowly for a fall/winter harvest.

The tomatoes are small but so far I have cooked and canned 12 kilo’s and probably had another 4-5 kilos that went into salad.

My 4 cucumber plants are producing as crazy, and I am having cucumber salad 4-5 days a week. I have given away quite a few cucumbers to my neighbors too and of course pickled some batches.

The fodder crops are being fed to the rabbits already, to avoid having to feed them on dry food but that also means I will have less fodder crops in the winter.

The blackberries are turning from red to back and they taste so sweet. The bush is full and lot’s of them are being frozen.

With the masses of blackberries I decided that I can use some of them for Christmas presents. I have a recipe for Wisconsin Cherry bounce that works well with blackberries too. As it has to sit 4 weeks at least but preferably 3-6 month, this looks good for some presents. So was busy heating up vodka and filling bottles. I have now 2 bottles with cherry and two with blackberries that are now sitting and waiting.

A lot of the blackberries is frozen for later use and I also made some blackberry jam already too.

How does your garden look like this week?

Weekending

 

Good morning and have a great weekend 

Winding down

  

  

Today I am winding down from a busy week. August is coming to an end. I spend the week busy either at work or working at home. I started prepping the garden for fall and winter and am building a walk way  in the garden. A new coop for the rabbits was build too and just in general the week was busy and over way to quick. Today we just relaxed. We had a BBQ for lunch and some nice cocktails to go with it. Now I am kind of waiting for the rain to hit, while listening to music and pottering and cleaning around the house.

Have a great weekend folks

{A Moment}

Today, instead of a regular post, I will be taking {a moment} 

A silent moment in thoughtful memory of Jana who tragically died this week and sending love and prayer to her family both here in Germany and the US

Having been an Au pair myself I feel connected to Jana, even though I never met her in person. As Au pairs we share the same experiences, the same hopes and dreams and none of us Au pairs imagines that our year could end like this or that death would be a part of our year.

Au pairs from all over the world will send a balloon to the sky on August, 25th 2013, 6pm German time to remember Jana, please join us in remembering a strong woman, who will be deeply missed by her family and friends.

Yarn along

Joining in with Ginny of Small Things for this week's yarn along. 

 

Not much of a knitter yet but I love crocheting, I got this book last week and decided to try something simple. Two hours later this was done.

 

Summer kitchen

 

 

I can't believe that my last post was a week ago. This week just flew by to be honest and I am wondering where time went. I was feeling slightly unwell towards the end of the week, feeling that a cold might be coming and taking steps to prevent this, including going to bed early. The week was foggy, cold and rainy, typical fall weather but it picked up again this weekend. I spend the weekend catching up on things in the garden, harvesting more cucumbers and tomatoes, froze another batch of apples and spend some time making beautiful tomato sauce a la Soulemama . I tried her recipe last year and loved it, so obviously I had to make it again this year. Some of the sauce did not make it into the jars but the first three jars have been canned and stored for winter. With the amount of tomatoes that I have, I can can a batch each week, which is gonna make me real happy. The first batches of apples sauce are stored away too but I also froze some and made an apple pie from the fresh august apples.
Life is good right now, I am grateful for all that the garden is producing at the moment.