The lil' farmstead is on the move...

Well it's finally final! We're finally home owners. We started looking at this place I'm sitting in right now way back in March. We believed we would be moving in beginning June, but things kept getting in the way, and I'm very happy to say that we are HOME!! Well it doesn't quite feel like home just yet-- our chickens and Maremma and rabbits are still at the old place, as well as tools and things in the storage sheds. And I've only got the kitchen set up and the clothes put away-- still many many things to do before we can have a house-warming soiree.

We bought a place on three acres overlooking Kachemak Bay and Mount Iliamna. It has good western exposure, with some flat grassy areas to the south of the house. There is a new shop on the property and.... a barn!!! Of good size too. I've moved the goats here in order to keep a closer eye on Belta, as I believe she will be kidding here very soon. I think she might be on gestation day 142, but I never actually saw the coitus happen. I love that word. Coitus.

The dang camera is still packed up somewhere in this woodpecker's boardinghouse. I should have dug it out yesterday, but instead I foolishly believed that the sun was going to stick around a day or so. Not so. Today, nothing but rain. Anyways, pictures to come.

This parcel has never been cultivated, save a few cottonwoods transplanted in the yard. I'm super excited to layout the new garden, but not too enthused to actually do the work of clearing what is there. Right now, it's just a bunch or fireweed where I plan to have the kitchen garden, and I thought the goats could help me out on that front. HOWEVER, both times I've let them escape the barn, they've gone the opposite way straight up the driveway toward the road where a big husky lives two plots up. Fearing the worst, both excursions have ended shortly after this by tying the buck up in the barn and luring the does in with grain. It takes a lot of coaxing, let me tell you. I've had the girls for almost a year now, and they're still just about as flighty and wild. I think I'll just wait and enjoy the fireweed bloom, them pick it and feed it to the goats in order to clear the garden plot.

Then the layering begins. Maybe. I'll probably have to terrace a bit. That'll be good anyways to see what the soil consists of. But layering. I'm excited to try this no-dig stuff. Well, I'll dig salmon carcasses into the soil about a foot, so that and the terracing are hopefully the extent of my garden groundbreaking. No till, baby. No turning over. Leave that soil structure alone once it's in place. So back to the layering, the building of this beautiful soil structure. Salmon one foot deep. Thick cardboard to keep the weeds down. All that bedding in the old barn now. Everything in my compost heap at the old place. All the vegetable harvest stuff the animals won't touch. Kelp deposited on the beach by late summer, early fall storms. Then the pile of old bedding that has been piled up outside the old barn all summer. Then, alder leaf fall right before the snow flies.

So, I think I just about have the barn ready to bring home the cluckers. I'm going to try a bit of a different layout than I was using at the old place. Instead of having completely separate areas dedicated to each animal, I'm just going to make the chicken feed area inaccessible to the goats. For the time being, I think I'll just toss the goat's hay onto their platforms twice a day instead of using a hay rack. The reason being that I am still not looking forward to picking all that hay out of Olga Petunia's fleece from this spring!! (I had the rack hung too high.) Also, at the old place the hens started laying eggs in the hay rack this summer, and I can't get them to go back to laying in their nesting boxes. I'm sure I'll end up tweaking this set-up quite a bit as the winter progresses, but one of the main draws to it is that I'll only need one pop-door for all the animals, and fewer interior walls makes for quicker cleaning. I'll eventually have the feed storage area fenced off, as well as a milking parlor, but right now I'm not even sure I'll be able to get my hands on my soon-to-be-milker's teats without wreaking havoc and pandemonium.

As for the rabbits, well I butchered all but two of them, and I only plan on keeping one of them to continue my breeding program. A friend in town bought some Flemish Giants this spring and I'm hoping to get a doe from her to start breeding this fall. From what I've read, the Flemish Giant isn't usually considered a very good meat breed because the bone to meat ratio is high, but I think if I cross bred with the satin I have, I may get a good product. Something I learned from cross-breeding goats of differing size is to always be sure that the doe is the bigger breed of the two, otherwise there may be tremendous birthing complications. Note to self: brush up on sexing rabbits and confirm the gender of each before throwing them together to go at it.

This spring I built a tractor hutch, and was planning on building another one so that I can house one doe in each and also have a separate hutch for the buck. I designed the hutch so that in the summer it can be a tractor in the yard, and in the winter it can hang on the wall in the barn. I'm also exploring vermiculture bins beneath the hutches for composting what kitchen scraps the animals won't eat, possibly chicken manure, and of course the rabbit droppings.

As it is right now, I don't have fencing up anywhere, so that's another project I need to start thinking about very soon. I'm sure Tufo the LGD will grow to be a wonderful protector, but those goats wandering up toward the road worries me so much that I'm not sure I should even let them out again until I have some kind of fencing up, even temporary. As for (semi)permanent fencing, I'm thinking about working on a wattle fence. I've got a large hillside covered in alders, and I think this would make a fairly impenetrable fence. I've also got access to electric fencing, but I know that takes quite a watchful eye (perimeter walks) to keep the current from grounding out on new growth. For the time being, I can borrow some 6'X6' chain link panels to at least let them out to get air and light. Currently, there are no windows in the building. Add that on to the honey-do list!

So for any of you folks reading this out there, I'd be interested in your take on a few topics:
Has anyone done the no-till gardening method long term? Does anyone know how long sheet composting takes to break down?
For anyone who has chickens and goats, do you house them together? What is your layout and how does it work out for you?
Livestock fencing: what works best for you?

Hope your summer has been bountiful and beautiful!

snow after the storms... and rabbit updates

For probably the last two weeks we have been enduring winds from all directions, making our already chilly weather absolutely frigid. As many people who have lived both close to and away from the ocean know, the cold is much more pervasive which it's accompanied by the dampness that creeps into your bones. I know that around the state everywhere, temperatures are record-breaking low for November, and Seldovia seems to be no exception. It's my first real winter keeping animals while also attempting to conserve electricity, so while in the past I have used heated water bowls, this year I'm hauling warm water twice or three times daily. The rabbits are the only ones who don't seem to be bothered by drinking cold water; they'll continually break the surface of the ice as it continues to freeze, creating intriguing tunnels of ice in their bowls.

The kits that were kindled a couple of weeks ago are finally adorable little bundles of fuzz that mama doe doesn't need to keep covered in the nest. Two didn't make it through the first week, so we are down to two survivors. They haven't ventured out of the box yet, but I anticipate that to happen any day.


Several days ago during my evening chores, I heard a rabbit shrieking and figured it was one of the kits complaining of the cold. I didn't notice anything in the rabbitry amiss, so retired for the night. The following morning, I found one of the junior does stuck in the fence behind the colony box. One of her rear paws passed through the chicken wire twice, and both her head and one foreleg was also through the wire. She wasn't moving, but still bright-eyed and alive. After I managed to get her out of the tangle she was in, I brought her inside for three days in hopes of nursing her back to a timely recovery. The paw that went through the wire twice was swollen to at least twice the size of the other paws, and she was extremely lethargic. I didn't go the whole route of applying cold compresses or anything, but I made sure she got plenty to drink and eat without needing to use the wounded paw and warmed her up for a while. After three days of learning how much a rabbit really does pee, I returned her to the rabbitry with a still-swollen, but usable paw. She seemed to enjoy her time chilling with the cat by the woodstove.

I'm excited to get first-hand knowledge of how fast these particular rabbits grow. I'm not sure of the age or breed of any of these rabbits, so their suitability for economic meat-raising is accordingly unknown. Both the adult doe and buck are good size (5+ lbs), but from what I understand about viable meat rabbits, they should be ready for butcher (and around 5 lbs) around 12 weeks. The junior does I received with their parents are around that age at least, but not quite 5 lbs. This could either be due to breed, feeding, or housing. All the juniors are shaping up nicely, but now I'm wondering if living colony-style causes them to keep trimmer because they get more exercise. I plan on piecing together a nice big hutch here in the next few weeks out of a large salvaged sawbuck we used to cut milled lumber slabs into firewood, and I'll post more on the bun-buns then.

A snowy hello from the Ramshackle Rabbitry!