Butcher Day & Other Goings On

This week has been fairly productive. I’ve been cleaning a lot since Justus is away for work. I’m happy to say that we have ZERO laundry in the laundry baskets, and I’ve dusted all of the rooms downstairs except the kitchen (which needs its own deep clean). But, who cares about that stuff, what’s going on with the homestead?!

Well, Monday, my friend Linda of Tale of Tails came over & helped me butcher my 10 week old growouts so that I could get the grow out pen cleaned out for my 6 week old growouts. All together we butchered 8 rabbits out of 9 – the one with the missing foot (aka Foot) I’m holding out until Justus gets home since it’s “his” rabbit. That put almost 20lb of meat in the freezer, taking our yearly total thus far to ~80lb of homegrown meat in the freezer so far this year.

Growouts

What else? Well, the pigs are doing very well. They’re a very entertaining pair, and I do enjoy watching them interact with the dogs and with each other. We are fermenting their hog feed for added microbes and bacteria, along with adding sunflower seeds – the pigs love them. We put garlic in their water and I have yet to see any worms or external parasites.

I have also accomplished my best batch of ‘booch yet! I made kombucha AND jun (kombucha made with green tea & honey instead of black tea & sugar) and BOTH turned out very well. The kombucha was better, I flavored it during 2F with raspberries and some mint that I grew. The jun was flavored with ginger and lime. I am enjoying drinking both of them.

Booch on left; Jun on right

I forgot to add in previous blogs, our chukar and pheasant chicks escaped, so that project went ker-plut. Looks like they  got out under a small gap between the ground and the cage. Oh well, live and learn. Hopefully this fall we can get the game bird pen erected so we don’t have these issues again.

Also, the goose eggs are doing very well. Still appears that 4 out of 5 are developing properly. They’re due to hatch June 29 if all goes as planned.

Copper maran egg from our new girls

I believe that’s about all for now. 🙂

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