Bunny Workshop

We have decided to do an Angora Workshop on May 21st which will correspond with the three rabbits we will have for sale.

I know you want one.

We have decided to do it this way because we are very concious of placing these little ones with homes that understand their unique care requirements. The workshop will start at 10am at our home out in Fort White. We'll proceed with a 2-2.5 hour seminar on care, housing, feeding, grooming, nutrition and breeding.

Everyone will have an opportunity to handle a baby as well as an adult Angora and practice grooming. After, we'll have a light lunch provided from food from our farm with various books available to peruse. We will have places available inside and out for anyone that is interested in bringing a spinning or fiber project and for those that would like to learn more about them.

There will be three slots for the workshop that will include the price of a rabbit you will take home that day and three (or four) slots for those just interested in the workshop and good times (price sans the rabbit).

Currently the two white and the one off-whitish-gray will be available for adoption. I will be sexing them later this week.

Please email me at heartsongfarms@gmail.com for more information.



u-pull?

The past few weeks I've driven down the county road on my way to the Farmer's Market the next town over. On my way there's a little hand written sign advertising Tomato Plants U-Pull.

U-PULL? I have never heard of such a thing. And each week I drove by curious but restrained from driving my van chock full of kids down some lonely dirt road just to see what I'd find.

Yesterday, I checked the Farm section of Craigslist and found the U-Pull tomato guy's ad. According to it, the plants were .10 a piece, you hand pull from the ground. With the garden mulched and the man taking a break from fencing the garden for lunch, I decided to take a trip over by myself to see what it was all about. Even if I only got ten plants I'd be beating my current price of .50 a seedling over the head with a shovel.

I now wished I had taken photos but to be honest the lonely dirt road then lead me to a large property with various trailers and buildings in disrepair, rusted out trucks, sun crisp fields of grapes and a little patch of PVC skirted earth crowded out with thousands of seedlings. There was no one around and according to other various hand written signs the plant pulling worked on an honor system. A little handmade lock box with a slot was designated for payment and a warning not to dig the plants "hand pull only". A table set up with a bucket of water and newspapers under a brick served as a processing point for keeping moist the freshly pulled roots.

Chickens squaked but I couldn't see them. Dogs barked from inside various buildings. No one was around and I expected to hear banjo music at any moment. I kept the car doors open and keys in my pocket.



The delivery was poor but the concept was genious.

All it would take would be a lay out of pvc to denote the different types of plants and a few seed packets or left overs from planting. It was heavily seeded, overcrowding was prominent but I was able to hand pick the plants I wanted, carefully extracting them from the soil.

I ended up with two hundred plants that have been transplanted into my garden. As of this morning they have almost all (save maybe 5-8) perked up. I got radish, broccoli, tomato, kale, zucchini and carrots (not holding out on the carrots since they don't like to be transplanted, I only got 10). They had many other varieties like mustards, hot peppers, other types of tomato and collards.

This might be an interesting venture to make a little money on the side with very little work. And a good lesson on following curious signs.

Garden's growing

Bareroot Heirloom Raspberry planted 2 weeks ago.

The garden is coming along nicely. I'm trying not to think too hard about being nearly 4 weeks behind on planting. It's starting to get H.O.T. down here in the South and with that comes a host of wonderfully destructive pests. Already the flies are buzzing and I'm fairly certain a couple mosquitoes have flown by.

A butterfly visiting the onions.

The weeds are poking through everywhere. I need to get down some mulch to help deter them and for water retention, the summers gonna be a scorcher. It always is. There are huge patches of land that had been tilled (and tilled and tilled) that are just covered in a thick green blanket of Bahaia (have I mentioned I hate this grass?) that now needs to be rototilled yet again. I could do it by hand but I will probably kill myself and someone has to be around to watch the kids, so that's out.

First teeny tomato.

There is still a lot of ground to get planted. After more than 2 weeks the quinoa, amaranth and strawberry popcorn haven't made a single sprout in the Big Field. I'm not holding out much hope for them. Which means if we want to have any of those I need to replant them (translate- buy more seeds) in the Garden. And for some reason everything that sprouts in the cold frames has been dying. One day they're out there and the next poof! gone.

Pole beans



Lack of seed sprouts means more money spent on seedlings. The whole debacle of loosing every seed we owned and having to replace them is now being lost to whatever reason. The leeks never came up, 40 basil sprouts died, most of the cukes are going but very, very slowly. While I've been getting good deals on the sprouts (6 pack for $3 usually, some of the tomatoes have been over 12" tall) it's still more money out the door. I'm just running too far into the season to start things from seeds again.

Rows of potatoes and peanuts.

There are still some good things going on. The 100' of potatoes I planted from a $2 batch of locally produced red potatoes four weeks ago have just about all sprouted with some exceptions. The 100' of peanuts is doing equally well. I put approximately 10lbs of potatoes in the ground. If I can get 25lbs back I'll mark that a success. Now I will start mulching and building up the hills around them.

New sweet corn starts.



I'm still learning, now into my third year. I haven't ever attempted anything to this scale. My garden last year had 3 tomato plants, this year I already have close to 60. It's an investment all around. One that I hope will start repaying us very soon (my budget can't take much more "investing"). I'll be pleased to get enough food to can and eat multiple meals a week fresh. If I can sell a little on the side to put back the money out, I'll be even happier.

Double tomato flower.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

Verify it's cherry

The landlord said it was a cherry tree (she also said we can have goats and we all know how that worked out). Can anyone tell me for sure if it's a cherry? I'm trying to hold in my excitement if it is. I've already planned out how I would can them...

A few days later...

Week update.

Last Thursday the world was graced with seven new Angora rabbit babies.

That first day I was sure there were seven. Friday there were definately just six. Saturday five and Sunday only four remained. It was sad loosing those babies even though 1 and 2 were more than likely eaten by Flora and I had to only dispose of the one frozen little thing that wiggled out of the cozy nest.

They still haven't opened their eyes but they have nearly doubled in size and now have short white fuzz.

They are ridiculously small and cute. They make little squeaky noises too that makes you just want to squeeze them.

We got our initial rabbit, Duncan, after reading Jenna Woginrich's book Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life. She talks about Angora's being a good investment for small city ventures that can't have traditional livestock. They are small, inexpensive to feed and provide some good things. We've used the manure in the garden for over a year. I've been keeping bags of wool since the first shearing and hope this year I'll be able to blend it to make yarn.

One reason we haven't bred them yet is because we wanted to be responsible with breeding and plan to market the rabbits to people that knit or spin their own yarn, not just to anyone that wants a rabbit. Since they are higher maintenance than a short hair or meat rabbit, we want to make sure they have a good home that understands the commitment required. We won't be selling these as Easter Rabbits. I was also nervous about breeding and not being able to sell and having a barn full of very cute but high maintenance animals.

Thankfully, in our area Angora sales aren't saturated, there actually quite rare. I travelled over a hour each time I purchased my rabbits because there were so limited in the area.

Since this breeding was so successful, we will be selling our purebred English Angora buck in the summer after his winter coat is sheared along with the babies from this litter.

Though I may keep one for myself. They're just so cute!

Pallet Brooders

We've used pallets in a lot of farm projects. We've made a deck, a compost bin, a goat mountain and now brooders. We're lucky to have a two stall open air barn but the 10x10 size is a little too large for baby birds. I've made two brooders, one in each stall. The first I made yesterday for the ducklings, goslings and poults.

 The far right pallet is attached to the wall using L brackets which makes it easy to disassemble. I've wrapped one side with chicken wire nailed in place using U staples for fencing. I had a few spare hinges I used to attach the pallet on the left to the stationary pallet on the right.

The shorter wall I used some salvaged IKEA laminate flooring simply screwed into the pallet to prevent poultry escapes. Then we secured a rubber strap (again we had lying around) to keep them closed.

Close up of the wire on the pallet.

Cozy poultry.

This is the smaller brooder made with the same concept. L brackets secure this pallet to the wall and hardware cloth is tacked on only the bottom half of the pallet. 

 The second side is secured with a fence kit I bought for some project years ago and never did.

Inside the chicken brooder.

The lock on the chicken brooder.

Total cost for all these projects was very reasonable. We got the pallets for free or $1 a piece. The chicken wire was a gift from my mom (when she gave us the 10 chickens at Christmas) but would have cost approx $10. L brackets cost approximately .50 a piece (we used 6, so $3). Rubber strap was about $2.

Chicken brooder costs roughly $8 for 16 square feet of brooder space. (fancy lock)

Turkey/Duck/Goose brooder roughly $6 for 32 square feet of brooder space. (less fancy locks)