Lilly Bug

Welcome Lilly!  She is our newest addition to the farm.  And what a cute little bug she is!  Last September, when my sister and I attended the second Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, PA, she purchased two Silver Fox does and one buck.  Lilly is their offspring from earlier this summer.  She is the blue variety, but they are often seen as black with the silvering developing as they grow.  They are an endangered breed of rabbits primarily grown for meat.  When I explain this to people, the most common response is, "Then why do you eat them?"  Well simply put, if they're not being bred for meat, then they are not being bred at all.

On our farm, we are working to be as sustainable in our food production as possible.  It is a process, and currently we can only produce a small portion of our own food.  But each year we are adding more and more.  Starting a rabbitry for meat is our next step.  Lilly is still a youngster though, and we're not planning on eating her.  She will be one of our breeding does once she is old enough.  She's just barely two months old.  In the mean time, I am phasing out of raising angoras.  While I love the fiber, they are a lot of work.  I have four at the moment, and plan to rehome three, keeping one.  Four is just too much for me right now.  Their fiber is fantastic being 3/4 English and 1/4 French.  If anyone is interested, please contact me.  Here's my girls.  They all have wonderful dispositions.  Especially the sisters.  And an angora or two is a great way to produce and harvest your very own fiber for spinning!

Mrs. Buns - 3 years old (mamma to Grey and Ginger)

Grey Baby - 1.5 years old (sister to Ginger)

Ginger Snap - 1.5 years old (sister to Grey)

This has been a tough decision for me.  I love all my rabbits.  But my initial intention was to sell Mrs. Buns offspring.  A few I did.  Three I kept.  And I still plan on keeping their brother, Runtdungus Fletcher.  He's my baby!  As I mentioned above, angoras do take a bit of maintenance, so please only serious inquires.  =)

Summer has gone fast!  I'm back to work full time now, which leaves a lot less time for the farm, garden, and shop.  Perhaps one day I will have more time, but for now we do what we have to do, and plan for future change.  It's all a process.  I'm enjoying the cooler nights (and sometimes days), but can't wait for the frosts of fall!  Autumn is my favorite time of year!  I much prefer the cooler weather.  Most of the garden vegetables have been exhausted, though we've still got a few things growing.  I planted some cabbage, onions, and cilantro earlier this month for (hopefully) a fall harvest.  I'm still trying to figure out what I can grow into the fall to extend our season.  Again...process.

A Homesteading Weekend

Last weekend was great!  My sister and I had fun from beginning to end.  If you didn't catch the last post, we attended the second Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs, PA.  Talk about homesteading and sustainable living galore.  They had everything from livestock and cooking, to foraging and hammocks.  Seriously folks, if you can thing of it, there was probably a lecture or workshop on it.  In fact, there was SO much to do and see that it would have taken you a week to see and attend everything (if you had a week).  We had to do a little strategic planning to figure out what we wanted to see and when.  They great thing about going with my sister was that we pretty much were interested in the same things, and outside of maybe two lectures, we took in the same information.

So it was great from the start!  We had booked a 'rustic' cabin at Kooser State Park for the weekend.  I'm glad we made our reservations ahead of time, as I think every single cabin was spoken for.  Let me say, for 'rustic' we sure made out pretty darn well:



Other than the absent bathroom, it had all the amenities you could ever want.  Seriously, I think I could live just fine in one of these if it had a water closet of sorts.  We got all settled in, made some dinner in the wood stove and spent the evening folding and waxing origami stars, pickin' on the strumstick, and chatting up our excitement for the upcoming day.

Waxed Origami Stars

The next morning we arrived at Seven Springs by 8:15am, hoping to get a close parking spot (which we did).  The outdoor grounds were opened by 9am and my sister seemed to make a beeline for the livestock.  I don't think it was intentional; maybe some unseen driving force, or the subliminal whisper of, "over here."  Whatever it was, she made it to the meat rabbits in break neck time, and by 9:15 had bought herself a pair of Silver Fox does and one buck from Mule's Eared Farm.  Well that was fast.  We happened to run into Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm (one of my favorite authors and bloggers) purchasing herself a Silver Fox doe.  She was one of the keynote speakers at the fair that weekend.  We were able to attend two of her seminars on Raising Meat Rabbits (I guess that was fitting, seeings how we just bought three) and Living A Sustainable Life.  Both were great.  She's a great speaker as well.  Before I forget, here's my sister, happily holding one of her new rabbits:

A girl and her rabbit.

Well, that's all i have to tell for tonight as my computer is about out of power!  And I suppose it's past my bed time.  I'll share more hopefully later this week (I've only just touched the tip of the iceberg), as well as my preparations for the Johnny Appleseed Festival coming up in my home town this weekend.