Spring is a busy time here, and although the calendar tells us that spring is still several weeks away, we are taking advantage of our recent good weather.  We are finally making some progress on some of our many on-going projects.  For us, creating all the spaces, fences and feeders from scratch is a never ending process.

The little rabbits are growing and the bunny enclosure is doing it's job, keeping the rabbits in and the cats out.  Still some finish work (and clean up), to do, but we will wait until the kits are a little bigger so as not to disturb mama and babies.  The below photo shows the rabbit enclosure being built.  It's still not quite finished, but is enclosed.  This photo will give you an idea of how we are using pallets to finish the space.

Mr. Elliott built a new hay feeder to hang on the wall of one of the barn stalls, and will be building more for the rest of the stalls.  I am hopeful that we will be wasting less hay now, and the sheep won't have to bend down anymore to eat.  This feeder was built with scrap wood and a hog panel.

The broody house, next to the chicken coop, now has a fence made from pallets and is fully enclosed above with netting.  The net keeps our birds in as they grow, and keeps the hawks and cats out. 

We have chosen to build our bird coops out of metal, rather than wood.  I prefer the look of wood, but the metal seems to do a better job of keeping the predators out.

The first photo is of the pallets being set up for the fence, the second photo was taken tonight after we finished the netting and put the adolescent guineas in their new enclosure.

We are in the process of building a feed storage building out of pallets, and a moveable fence with pallets as well.  Then we have more hay feeders to build, and some table height gardens for me.  I am hopeful we will get most of our building projects finished before I have to consolidate my efforts into growing some food.  Homesteading is sometimes hectic, and often exhausting, but always changing, and never boring.


Now I need to revamp my chicken tractor before the new chicks hatch...tick tock, tick tock...

This idea caught my eye, because we are always looking for new ways to use eggs.  This isn't my photo, so you'll have to use your imagination as to how to create this for your family!

As someone who has always done what I can to help the innocent creatures of this world, not being able to save a life might be the most difficult part of this homesteading lifestyle that I have chosen.

When I was a kid, I remember visiting a pig farm in Oklahoma.  The place wasn't very well kept, and I was shocked at the conditions in which those pigs lived.  As we toured the facilities, the farmer was gathering up the dead piglets, which he apparently would do every morning.  He had a bonfire going, and was just chucking the little bodies into the fire without a care in the world.  I was horrified, and that memory has stayed with me through the years. 

Couldn't that farmer have done something differently to improve the conditions?  Shouldn't he at least have been less cavalier about the deaths of his livestock?

Fast forward thirty years, and here I am with my own farm, responsible for the animals I have chosen to bring here, even more so for the new lives that are created.  I do not take bringing new life into this world lightly.  I don't see my animals are purely profit, and I don't measure their lives in dollars.  I see myself as their caretaker, for better or worse.

On some days, the "worse" part of that phrase is just difficult to take without drowning in guilt over those creatures who might have lived if I had done things differently.

I haven't lost very many animals since choosing to travel the homesteading road, but those that I have lost stick with me.  Unfortunately when dealing with the care of animals, learning how best to do so sometimes costs an animal it's life.

Sometime in the night, our French Lop rabbit gave birth to six babies.  By this morning, three of them were not in the nest and had died from the cold.  When my husband found them, there were three scattered randomly across the floor that were cold, and were not moving.  I picked them up, wrapped them in a towel and tried rubbing their little bodies while holding them under a light to warm them up.  No response.  I ran them into the house where it was warmer and tried everything I could, but they were gone.

I can't help but feel responsible, and guilty, for their short lives that were filled with suffering.  I was worried about this doe having her first litter in February for this exact reason, but because of her age she needed to be bred.  I could have brought her inside to watch her more closely.  She shouldn't have had as much room as she did.  I should have checked on her more often, and sooner.  On and on I go, knowing that things like this happen on a farm, but regretting that it happened on my watch.

And so, today I will be sad about the three that didn't make it, and tomorrow I will be happy about the three that did.  I have learned some lessons, and while I am glad to gain the experience, it just breaks my heart that those lessons have so high a price.

Spring is coming, time to think about chickens!  I'll be loading up my incubator in the next few days; after the chicks and ducks hatch, they will be going outside to my chicken tractor.  I wish I had seen this drawing before I built my Beverly Hillbillies contraption!

It is a beautiful, and strangely warm, February day here in Kansas.  Many doings are afoot outside, in a furious attempt to get ready for spring.  Cleaning out the barn, finishing the rabbit enclosure hopefully before the babies are born, trying to construct the fencing for the broody house so we can hatch some eggs and sell some chicks, babying the seedlings so they will be ready for transplant, finding time to get a new load of straw bales for some raised bed gardens we are planing this year, and on and on the list goes.  

I have so many articles waiting to be finished so that I can put them here for you, but I suppose I need to find time when the sun goes down for that; daylight is burning away and there is much to be done outside.

My Newfoundland keeps finding bits of a rotting dear carcass, which is making her sick.  Woke up this morning to a rather unpleasant gift from her, and found that I have probably killed my celery as well.  It appears the pots were too close to the heater I use to raise the air temperature for our seed starting area, and the celery has collapsed.  Ah well, I will just start more, and learn that celery does NOT like to be warm.

And so, as I drain the last of my morning coffee, all these issues are bouncing around in my head, waiting for me to fix/build/care for them all.  I leave you with this photo, which makes me smile, and the idea that homegrown food is not only good for you physical health, but your mental health as well. 

I bought ducks to use as bug eaters, and have three too many male ducks.  All three are for sale for breeding or bug eating, ten bucks per bird or twenty bucks for all three.  Tell yer friends tell yer neighbors, take my ducks, please!  They are super cute, and very fun to watch in the water.  I was spraying them with a hose this morning, and they loved it.  Ducks are just so cute!  Can't have just one, though, they have to have company.