Pumpkin and Winchester's First Litter, 8 weeks

These kits are 8 weeks old and beautiful! We have three does (2fawn, 1 blue tort) and five bucks (2 black, 1 fawn, 1 tort, 1 ermine). They all have very good crimping to thier first coats and very good balance of guard hairs to wool. 

Our First Video~

We uploaded our first video, and although it WAS HD quality, Blogger converted it to a low-pixel mess. Sigh. At least you can see how cute the kits are, under Winchester and Pumpkin's First Litter page >>> to right.

Upcycling Old Mattresses & Box Springs

When we decided to paint our house and remove/redo the front garden path, we also had an old box spring sitting around from our outdoor bed. Yes, we have an outdoor double bed on a shaded & covered deck, complete with fan. It's a must, really!


We didn't want to pay to dump it at the time, so I decided to experiment & I stripped it apart. It was/is a really old box spring, from the time when they actually contained springs! We stripped the cloth cover off, detached the wooded slatted platform (and left on the double bed as the new box spring of sorts), and removed the connected inner springs. Then we spray painted the inner springs yellow, along with another part that I am fairly vague about what to call. It is sort of a wire trellis sheet thingee.


We hung the new trellises the south-facing wall of our house in the sun. It gets HOT along this wall, and I planted some grape vines along it. The inner spring mattress-turned trellis-gets the leaves & grapes off the wall some, allowing them more space to grow & support. It allows them to not fry in summer. The grape vines will eventually alleviate all the glare from the wall off the other plants below, allowing them not to fry as well. When fully "in leaf" the vines did their job last year, and the plants in the bed below grew HUGE!


We have an experiment next to the inner spring trellis, in which I wired my own trellis (created with wire & hooks) right next to the siding. The grape vine there is significantly smaller in size this year, but was not when it was planted last year. I think the grapes like the additional air space between the wall & plant that the inner spring trellis provides. As you can see, we had no problems with the heat from the wall scorching our plants. You can see the trellis to the right along the wall (more pics soon). In fact, we had to beat a path to the front door at times....

Growing Citrus in High Desert & Permaculture Remodel of Side Yard

Side Yard Project:
I have been interested in permaculture for a couple years now, and the permaculture methods of soil building, plant companions, and water-scaping drive my every move in my garden. Water-scaping in permaculture seeks to add more moisture into the ground from rain/snow, and involves several techniques to get the water into your soil for storage.

One method of water storage we will be investigating in the coming week is swales. Swales are small trenches made in just the right spot to divert run-off from your sprinklers, rain storms, snow melt, etc. into the ground, and not into your neighbors yard or into the storm drains. We have a side yard that we are building into a raised bed, using some free HUGE cottonwood half-rounds as a retaining wall, and will start project by building swales under the raised bed to make sure water is stored so we can use less drip-system irrigation.

We will cut our sprinkler system off to the side yard zone, and install a washing-machine grey water recycling box that will do the irrigation for us as we wash our clothes. The side yard will be planted with fruit trees & associated forest-garden rings, and vegetables.

Citrus Tree:
We have a small improved Meyer lemon citrus tree that produced about 7-9 lemons for us last year. It is about 1 ft tall x 1ft wide. This year, we hope to get at least that much from our little tree. How do you grow lemons in the high desert? Well, glad you asked!

We repotted our lemon tree into a felt barrel, about 2ftx2ftx2ft in dimensions. We planted it with soil-less potting mix, per the felt barrel instructions. We mixed in lots of rabbit fertilizer, dried leaves, and humus. We put in a little fruit fertilizer & soil biotics as well to get it started growing again quick fast. Then, we positioned the barrel near our outdoor fountain in mostly sun. We planted beans to spill over the sides, as well as a few annuals.

The citrus barrel is positioned next to the house and fountain because they both insulate the citrus from occasional temps below 40' a this time a year. The evaporation off the fountain will also make the citrus grow better in the high desert.

Citrus does best if the temps do not fall below 40' at night, and will die if frozen. We over-winter indoors next to the slider.

The 10 Kits are Here! with pictures....

winchester and pumpkin have a litter of 10 kits! Winchester has 3 legs, Pumpkin has one. Both have good bodies and wool. Both are very dense. More pics of kits & progress notes on the page "Pumpkin & Winchester's First litter" >>>>

New Chicks ** Coming Soon!

So, this year I said I would never get more chicks, only feathered-out pullets. Then, I found a breed that I could only get in chick-form.


Background: We have a coop that isn't working for us in the side yard, was used only temporarily while building big coop/run. It is a "mobile" chicken tractor type coop. We have been trying to sell it to someone who has a big enough yard to accommodate moving it with the large footprint (8x5 ft). We have too many gates.


I can't stand parting with it for 200.00, as we paid twice that. But, no takers on CL. It has a rather small upper deck nesting/coop area that is super easy to clean out, but...not too roomy for roosting.


Thus: we decided to get bantam hens & roo. Now, the lady at the feed store was kinda....skeptical ....about the ability of a bantam to fill a fridge with eggs. However, we are taking a stab at it. They lay from 4-5 eggs/week per hen, that are 1/2-2/3 the size of "normal" eggs. "Normal" eggs have a big variation in size, depending on breed and age of hens.


The Chicken Math: But, you can fit more bantams into tight spaces. They are good for backyard & urban settings, and have a tender meat that is larger than a quail when through laying. We figure at 4 ft/bird outdoor space....we can fit 10 of them into our little coop. IF they were all hens, laying 4-5 eggs/week, that are 1/2 the size of normal eggs, then our little hens would lay the equivalent of 20-25 "normal" eggs per week. That's a lot of eggs!

Dark Brahma Bantam roo, hen

Gold Laced Cochin Bantam, hen

Gold Laced Cochin Bantam, roo

Partridge Cochin Bantam, hen

Partridge Cochin Bantam, roo

We can also potentially sell chicks for show/pet/livestock. We ordered some pretty boutique-ish hens, with flashy feathers ^^^ . The Dark Brahma Bantams are not as broody as the Cochins/Pekins, and the Cochins will brood all eggs for us & raise chicks.


Modifications: Our little coop will require a larger roost/coop part, which we will build onto the back, as well as needing one side roofed in, and a large box/raised bed garden on the bottom. That a way, we can do the deep-litter method that is working so well for us in the larger coop.


And I have to brood the damn chicks. Grrrr.

West Coast Classic show results!

We attended the HUGE West Coast Classic show this weekend. And, I swear I will never do all three days again. Whew! It was exhausting for people AND rabbits. I think in the future one day is enough. I suffer from crowd exhaustion myself, and get pretty snippy at times.  The rabbits were all pretty crabby and stressed on day three.


In terms of goods and booths, it was fun to see the angora booth, with yarn and angora spinners (kicking myself for not getting a photo). Picked up two great books about spinning and caring for Angoras (future post). Evan also bought polymer clay french angoras, and a cage. We are thinking of making these ourselves. We picked up some awesome handmade felted soaps and felted bunnies from Black Diamond Rabbitry. We got to hand out our new business cards.



We sold our sweet bunny, Oyster, to Kelly and Christine from Southern California. We sold Coal and Cinder to Elodie, an amazing mom, spinner, and farmer from the Sacramento area. Sad to see them go, but to great homes! We now are lacking in rabbits to sell...thus...upcoming breeding.



We registered Winchester and Pumpkin with ARBA. Winchester won his third leg, this time as a senior, and he will be a Grand Champion now! Hot Cocoa got two legs, and did well competing against adult long-time breeders in the Angora Specialty Open (consistently came in second). We were surprised by Hot Cocoa, as she has consistently been judged second or third to her litter mates at previous shows. Oyster won his first leg for his new owners! And Baked Potato won first place, almost got a leg, but lost out to dad, Winchester. Both Winchester and Hot Cocoa were purchased from Black Diamond Rabbitry. Oyster and Baked Potato are our rabbits, bred from their stock.


Baked Potato and Black Diamond's Spook being judged

Hot Cocoa and Black Diamond's Heather being judged on shoulder width

Pumpkin (with a very short wool coat) being judged. She is not "in coat" yet.

We mainly lost some points due to the softness of our baby coats on our juniors, although it cannot be said that we did poorly at these shows by any means. Our juniors are not yet balanced out with lots of guard hairs, and some have very few to no guard hairs. I don't find this to be a problem, Winchester has always been cottony, and will soon blow his first coat and start to grow "real" wool, which will be exciting to see. His kits still have two months left competing as juniors to balance out more. Since Winchester is already a Grand Champion, I don't think their future is dim by any means. They take time to grow into real true adult wool coats. The dam of our juniors is well balanced with plenty of guard hairs. Pumpkin, who is just about a year old, is just starting to grow in her first ever adult coat. It just takes awhile. I am excited to see how the remaining juniors grow!

Oyster's show comment card went home with his new Mamas. Baked Potato's not pictured yet.