Rabbit drama

The last couple of weeks have been extremely eventful for us as far as the rabbits are concerned.

First of all, Abe went out to see them one day and the mama of a two week old litter was jumping all around, flopping about and just generally freaking out. Abe looked at her wonderingly and there on the floor was a huge rat snake with a white baby halfway down its throat. Abe killed the snake, but it was too late for the baby. We normally only kill a snake if it is right up near the house and poisonous (rattlesnake), but we also cannot allow a non-venemous snake to take up residence with the rabbits. It was so big (4 feet) and beautiful though that I skinned it and have been tanning the hide. Today is the last day of painting both sides with a glycerin/alcohol mix and it'll be ready to use. When this all happened, we took Leo out to the rabbit shed to show him - we are trying to install in our fearless ranger a sense of fear in some things, you know, like rattlesnakes. Ever since then, he'll periodically say in a tiny, sad voice, "Poor rabbit" and then shout angrily "Bad snake!".

The next major event was the twelve week birthday of our first litter. We kept two females and one male, but the other four met their end. I won't post photos of this process, as some of you I'm sure do not want to see it, but don't forget, this is the reason we are breeding rabbits! We dropped Leo off at a friend's house, then processed the four young ones. We are tanning their furs too. While Abe did the grimmer side of the affair, I helped skin and then cleaned the skins and put them in a water/acid/salt mix. They have now been there for a week and as soon as I finish this post, I will go and peel the flesh off the furs and then they'll go back in the acid for another week. If it all works out well, I plan to make quilts, purses, etc. out of the fur. For the past week, we have been eating rabbit, cooked all kinds of ways, and it is truly delicious.

Two days later, we noticed Obama - our prettiest and biggest female - dragging her hind legs around. We thought that maybe she had just jumped wrong after the stress of the snake, but we seperated her from the others just in case. The next day, one more, Kiwi, had the same symptoms. Abe did some research and figured out what the problem was. They have a parasite called Encephalitozoon cuniculi (EC). Apparently over 80% of all rabbits have it, but only 15% ever show symptoms. We have started medicating them with a drug called Panacur and after three days they have already got some use of their legs back. They will be on the medication for three weeks and we're hoping they will fully recover. We will also be medicating everyone else too, as they probably all have it, and the medication does not harm them even as a preventative measure.

We also made an outside pen for the babies that have been weaned. Right now we have just two females that are breeding, so there aren't that many babies at one time, but we will be putting two more females with a male this month. At the moment, there are only three young rabbits in the pen, but they love going outside, and they have a tree to play under.

Just so that we end on a positive and happy note, Coco had five more babies the other day. They are precious (although they don't start to be pretty until they're a week old). Reina and Coco have now had two litters each since being here (the first of which happened right after they arrived at our place). For a while we were thinking that all the other females might have been bred, as Frisky got into their pen last month. But though his name is fitting, he was either too young or not in there long enough, and noone had any unplanned babies.

For more photos (none of butchering), click here.

Solar Food Dehydrator and food preservation

This week, Abe made us a solar food dehydrator, an essential component of any self-sufficient homestead. It has a see-through top and front, metal sides, and space for 4 trays, 4 feet by 2 feet each. It has screened air vents at the top and bottom so that hot air rises up through the produce, pulling out the humid air and thus speeding up the drying time. It is great. We got a couple of hundred apples from a neighbor the other day, so it has already paid for itself. We can dry 40 apples at a time in two partially cloudy days. For photos of the dryer being made, click here.


Anyone that has a garden knows that when something is producing well, you have way more than you need or want. For example, the first squash of the season are so exciting and so tasty, but after eating squash every meal, every day, you're almost happy to see the plant dry up.

The key with this imbalance of food is to preserve it in some manner or other, so that you can eat it during winter. There are several ways to do this, each with their own advantages.

Drying is my favorite, as it conserves a lot of the original nutrition and taste, and I consider it safer than canning (which might just be that I'm fairly new to canning and am a little afraid that I won't do it right and will end up poisoning my family!). You can then store the dried produce in cans, bags, containers, whatever. They don't take up much space and will last a long time (provided that you dried them properly). We use the dried fruit as snacks, eaten as is. Vegetables can be rehydrated in soups or eaten like chips. It is truly amazing what you can dry, and how well the flavor is preserved.

We can some things. Canning keeps the moist quality of your produce. For example, we pickled and canned some cucumbers a couple of weeks ago. They are delicious, and everything, including the dill, came from our homestead.

We don't have a freezer yet, so not an option for us, although we would probably only freeze meat, and only for a short amount of time.

Another great way to have fresh food in winter is to grow things that naturally last, like winter squash. I still have one winter squash left over from last year! We have now collected the first of our pumpkins.

We are still slowly building up our homestead, and each year we increase our systems. We look forward to having the pantry ready for next year and being able to fill it in the main growing season.

29th Month

Leo's now 2 years 4 months. It seems like the months just roll on by, with him growing and changing daily. I can now hardly keep track of all the little stages that he is going through.

He now totally gets the idea of deals – “Eat all your food and you can have chocolate pie” - and we thought we had entered a golden age. Not so. It seems that our two year old is as adept at deal-making as we are.
“Come on, Leo, get your shoes, we have to go into the village.”
“No. No car.”
“Yes. We have to.”
“Car, then swim.”
“We'll see how it goes.”
“Leo swim, Papa swim, Mama swim, Dogs swim.”
“Okay we'll all go swimming when we get back.”
So Leo then gets his shoes and proceeds happily to the car. He falls asleep on the ride into the village and doesn't wake up until we get home. And we figure we are off the hook, but then his eyes flicker open, look around and he says “Swim”.

We have started swimming every day in our pond. We have put our name down for a machine that is in the area. When he gets around to us (the list is fairly long), we will be able to fix the pond, allowing 2 more meters (or 6 more feet) of depth, as well as making it wider. But even in its broken and depleted state, it is still over my head in the center. Leo loves it. He begs to go swimming all day, every day. He's not yet swimming, or even close, but he is making a lot of progress and his confidence grows each time we go down there.

His language skills are also improving rapidly. He learns new words every day, even if he doesn't pronounce them all very well. For example, he loves to play with the numerous amount of frogs that are around our place, but he pronounces them “Cocks”. Always makes me giggle when I hear him shout “Cocks. More cocks for Leo. Where more cocks?” Oh well, I still have time to mature, I guess. We are also in the “watch what you say” phase: one of his favorite sayings right now is “Oh shit!”.

We have a bunch of fridge magnet letters and numbers, which he increasingly likes to play with. He brings us letters and tells what they are (B, bear. C, car. He knows more than half of them now). He also says numbers up to five easily, though he doesn't always use them in the right place. He gets two consistently right, but then we'll add another item and he repeats two. When we say three, he'll repeat it.

He's still very helpful. He tidies his toys away well. Loves to get your slippers, put things in the trash, etc. He especially likes to help mama make chocolate cheesecake, which makes for a great photo if nothing else.

I have started telling him stories whenever he gets a little upset and looks like a meltdown might be coming. They always start “once upon a time there was a little boy named Leo and he had two dogs, Salsa and Gracie. One day...”. It almost always settles him and he starts to tell me what story to tell – that they meet a bird, or cow, or fish, that it gets dark and they see the moon and stars, that a car comes and his grandparents, Momo and Popo are here, etc. It's kind of fun, as he gets so excited when I incorporate what he wants into the story – he will often cuddle me and say “Good girl, mama.”.

I think I probably portray Leo in an overly wonderful light. For the most part, he is a great kid, but he is a two year old and he does have his moments – refusing to do what you want, whining, crying, etc. In this we are sometimes (though not always) able to employ the help of a little friend – Alfie. Alfie is a hand puppet that Abe had when he was a kid (you know, from ALF the TV show), and Leo adores him. Alfie can tell Leo to do anything and he'll do it. Alfie wants an elephant, a circle, a blue cup, etc. Leo will go get it. Alfie wants to put Leo's shoes on (a battle at times, as Leo still prefers to go barefoot), he'll go get them. Leo even puts Alfie on the toilet each day. Alfie is a master tool of manipulation, working for the parental units!

Leo has developed a cute-ish habit. He'll poop in the toilet in the morning, but for his evening poop, he much prefers to strip down naked and go outside. At first we thought this was hilarious and humored him. However, it has started to dawn on us that this is perhaps not socially acceptable behavior for all places – somehow city folk are fine with you pooper-scooping a dog's shit, but the same does not apply to children! Oh well. I'm sure this will not be the only obstacle we face with him entering the real world (he already finds it funny and delightful that there is water in other people's toilet). I sometimes wonder how he will view his upbringing when he grows up and sees a little more of what the world has to offer. I guess we'll find out soon enough at the rate that time is passing.

For more photos, click here.

Worm Harvester

We made a worm harvester this week, which will make our worm-and-soil-farming a lot easier.

When we have changed the worms' bedding before (to use in the garden of course), we have picked the worms out by hand, a very tedious and time consuming affair. This should make it all a lot easier.

We will post instructions and a video of us using it soon.

For more photos, click here.

Tank amendments

We had a rain a few days ago that didn't amount to much, but did come down very hard and fast. Abe went out to check on how the new tank was performing and discovered that the gutters were overflowing the pipes.

It seems we underestimated the volume of water that comes off the roof in a hard rain. Abe found a great website that tells you how to calculate what size pipe you need to accommodate what force of rain.

We added an extra line of 2” pipe. We could have changed the whole thing to a 4” pipe (which is more than we would have needed as 4” pipe is way more than two 2” pipes, because the area of a circle is the radius squared), but it was less work and less expensive to add an extra line – one line for each side of the roof.

However, having increased the pipes into the tank, we then had to increase the overflow. If the tank is full and water is coming in two 2” pipes, but can only leave through one 2” pipe, we will have a problem. It will overflow out the top, risking water getting behind the liner and dislodging it. So Abe put an extra overflow, making it a 4” pipe just to be safe.

We have now finished the tank... again!

Know that we make these mistakes for the benefit of our readers. If we didn't make the mistakes, we wouldn't know the problem existed and we couldn't prevent others from making them! No need to thank us, just happy to help.

Click here for photos of the tank.

Trevor's iphone

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Originally uploaded by velacreations

Our friend, Trevor, came to visit us in February and Leo fell in love with his iphone. To read the back-story, go to this post: http://velacreations.blogspot.com/2010/02/first-blood.html)

We had tried, jokingly, to get him to leave it behind, but he wasn't having any of it. Well, a week or so ago, Trevor sent us an awesome gift... an iphone! We love it. Abe reads books on it, Leo watches movies on trips, and pretty soon, when we get something sorted with our internet service, we will be able to use it as a phone.

Here's a video of Leo watching little chalk men with all of our faces on them. Within a few minutes, he had figured out how to make them go away.

Rabbit update

Something else we did this sunny week was make an outside pen for the female rabbits. The males each had one already, but now finally the girls get to have one too, and they love it. They have already started burrowing, which is why the fence around the pen goes down into the ground a foot or until it hits bedrock.

Here's a photo of all the babies that have been weaned. We will be keeping all the females and one of the males. They will be able to go back in with the others after a couple of weeks.

Reina has had more babies. They were born yesterday. As yet, we don't know how many, as we want to leave them alone for the first week.

We went to the city yesterday and when we got home, we discovered a little rabbit drama. Frisky (very appropriately called) had gotten into the females' pen. We have four younger female rabbits that we had not wanted to breed for another month (once they start breeding, they stop growing apparently). 3 of them are big enough and it's not that big of a deal if they are pregnant, but we are really hoping that he didn't get Button, who is younger and smaller. We keep buck, doe and litter records on all breeding activity, so we've marked down this day on our records, and we'll just have to wait 30 days to see who he got to!!!!!!

For more photos, click here.