Closed

Yesterday, we closed our rabbitry. Sold it lock, stock and barrel to the extremely sweet girl that purchased the little buck boy a few weeks ago. Everything went: combs, waterers, feed, hay, extra cages, even the wool I had planned to process.

I've been thinking about doing this for a good long while now. It was a big decision and yes, it was very hard emotionally. I forgot myself this morning and went in the barn to see them and was met with empty shelves.

2011 Yarn and Fiber CSA

Flora and her baby

I have been nervous about doing this but I think I can now safely start our 2011 Yarn and Fiber CSA. We have ten pounds of Gulf Coast Sheep wool ready to blend with our personal Angora fiber. The sheep wool comes from a local, neighbor farm and we have scheduled processing with a small fiber mill just south of us, Woodland Hills.


We're going for about an 80/20 mix on the sheep to rabbit ratio and will provide shares in the form of either roving or double plied yarn. There are only going to be FOUR full shares available to ensure everyone that participates recieves about 2 pounds of fiber/yarn along with other special goodies from the farm including a newsletter and information about the rabbits and sheep that have provided the fiber for your share. Your share price is determined by the amount of processing that is involved in the share you choose. (Half shares will include approx 1 pound)

The yarn and fiber will be undyed, neatly packed and shipped to you for the share price including a special shareholder day where you will be invited out for a fiber art day at the farm to meet the rabbits, have lunch and work on projects.

The cost of the share goes to supporting this new farmer, processing the yarn, supply new housing for the rabbits, feed, hay and the start of a rabbit only fresh vegetable garden.

We are dropping off the fiber for processing in May and expect to have it back in August. Enough time to get holiday presents made. Shipping will be done as soon as it is recieved. We will send you emails with the progress of the processing as it becomes available. Our Yarn and Fiber CSA shares also make great gifts.
I will update the shares available as they are purchased. If you are interested in a share please contact me at heartsongfarmfamily@gmail.com for more information.

We also have one Angora buck baby available for $35 adoption fee ($45 with workshop) and a few non-rabbit buying slots in the May 21st New Rabbit Owner Workshop.

Busy.

Climbing me looking for dinner.

Friday marked the week's end for us. The kids and I ran into town for goat hay and ten pounds of raw wool. The wool will be cleaned and blended with Angora into roving and yarn. I can't wait to offer it for sale in our Etsy store. Rabbit wool from my own bunnies, Sheep wool from a neighbor raising an endangered breed and a small family mill in my state. I've raised the bunnies from babies. I know the shepherd. I've shook hands with the sheep. I'll drop it off in person; discuss with the owner the best methods and blendings in the spring.

It feels good to support local. It feels even better to be part of the process.

My friend and her family came that night for a weekend visit. I'm not used to hosting overnighters as my previous house wasn't size accomodating. They've bought land just down the street and plan to start a self-sufficient farm like us. Nine kids and four adults somehow fit in for two nights without fighting. The first night, excitement was riding the kids, like the eve before a holiday but so much more because it bounced between them all and back again.

Saturday they awoke with much more energy than the parents, siphoned from some magical place inacessable to grown-ups. I wish I had a tenth of that bottled. I'd be rich. Or at least not quite so tired. After some errands, we started putting up the fence around the pasture. This was built for a horse farm with a beautiful wood slat fence running the perimeter. A beautiful fence that goats would walk right through. My shoulders and arms feel leadened. Tired. Old.

In two days we ran wire fence between the posts, anchoring in between for a little extra goat resisance, pounding in three-quarter inch staples by hand across some two hundred plus feet and four feet up. We'll need another 330 foot roll plus a good chunk of a third before it's ready for the animals. We hadn't even had to sink the posts since the pasture was already there, I can't imagine setting that up from scratch. PX90 has nothing on farm work.

I decided today was the day for breeding the rabbits. At breakfast Duncan got a mate. The weather has been stable with warm days and cool nights. I think the last of the frosts is behind us even if the almanac warns into March. Florida hates the cold and shrugs it off like a thick coat as quick as it can in lieu of flip flops and mosquito repellant. I'm hoping when Flora builds her nest there won't be any question further question of cold. This will be our first litter even though we've owned rabbits for over a year. Today was the first time I thought of kits and had no doubts. Sometimes you have doubts or worries and surge on through, other times you just sit and wait them out.

If all goes well, come May we'll have fluffy white baby rabbits for sale.

The rabbit area and chicken coops got mucked out and spread on the garden. Tomorrow Blake is coming back over to finish the tilling with his horses. I'm trying hard to hide my giddiness behind the stoic expression of something more than a novice. I don't think it's working very well. Then the post pounding starts. More wire will get stretched; rabbit-proof fencing this time. I have sprouts starting green life in yogurt cups, lettuce and strawberries from the farmer's market waiting for more room to spread their roots. Even more seeds are on the way. Tri-colored pole beans, strawberry popcorn and turnips, buckwheat cover crop, white radishes and heritage lettuce. The garden will be a wonderland by June.

Leeloo went off-leash for the first time today. I'm marvelling at how well her training has turned out over the course of just one short week. She sat, she came, she played. Tonight, we went out together off-leash again without a hitch. She's like a new dog. Even if she did gnaw the corner off the guest's sheet. I suppose we can't all be perfect.

Tonight I'm ending on a high note. Yes, I'm tired. Yes, I ache worse than the time I stupidly signed up for a personal trainer at Bally's. The house is a mess and the list of things to do didn't really go down at all regardless of the near endless work of three days. But I'm pleased.

Two new Rabbits and Why

Flora II and Fauna joined us Monday. This brings our rabbitry up to four now. We'll start breeding in October/November when the weather is cooler and the girls are older. They were born on Mother's Day.

Rabbits are the ideal small home/apartment livestock. They need relatively little room. They can be three-fold animals providing manure for gardens (which tomatoes love), wool and meat. You can also breed them to sell the kits.

In our area, Angora's range in price from $30 to over $100 a piece depending on the breed, color and sex. A litter of five healthy babies can make a car payment. They also need very little. Food, free access to hay and a never ending supply of water. Draft and drip free housing with good ventilation and a way to capture their droppings and you're good to go. Initial set ups can range in price from very cheap to really fancy.

We chose galvanized steel cages made for rabbits that are 30x30x16" for the bucks and 30x36x16" for the does (which are housed together). Each has it's own water bottle, food bowl and hay manger. We give them glue-free toilet/paper towel rolls and pine cones to play with and we have a enclosed baby gate for them to get out of cage exercise.

The hutches were built with mostly scrap materials and the cages simply rest on the frames. The new hutch for the does has a place for stackable milk crates that holds all their goodies.

So far, I've harvested nearly three ounces of fur off the older two bucks. Fur runs about $6 an ounce on Etsy, give or take. I buy them Timothy hay buy the 96ounce bag that runs $10-12 and lasts about 1.5 months. I get Hartz pellets from the grocery store. A 10lb bag is $9.99 and lasts about 2 months. I'm hoping to get to a point where the rabbits at the very least pay for themselves. I already use the manure in the garden which I think has really benefited the plants though that is hard to tell. If I had a bit better way to do it I could collect the manure and sell that too.

The point of all this is to point out our effort on bringing in animals to the farm that aren't a burden. They need to pay for themselves in some way or help to reduce the cost of having to do other things, i.e. I don't have to buy manure anymore, which is something I did. Moving towards a dream where we live a self-sufficient life means taking the steps now to build towards that. It would do us no good to have animals that only drain limited resources. We all have to work together to make life easier and more productive. The rabbits have that down already.

Multiplying like, well...Rabbits.

Today, I went and picked up two more Angora kits from the same lady that has so wonderfully helped us add Duncan and Leeloo to our family. Initially, I was only going to get the doe...but hot damn those are cute bunnies. I just couldn't resist picking up a papered REW buck sibling to add to my collection.

The nameless buck is on the left, the pointed doe on the right.

So, this is the start of it. Duncan was the first of our Angora Rabbitry. He's been such a great starter bunny but, lets be honest, you can't run a fiber/breeding business with just one buck.

While we won't be able to breed the siblings, Duncan can have a go at Flora in a few months and see what happens. I believe we'll be able to use nameless buck in 2 generations of that line but he won't really be ready to breed for a year or so anyway and who knows where we'll be or how many rabbits we'll have by then.

They're the cutiest things I've ever seen I think (besides baby chickens and baby goats, well all baby farm animals kinda rank the same on my cute scale).

I will probably start building an actual website for these guys in a month or so. Our Etsy store will be for their wool and any spun yarn I can manage to make. The website would be for kit sales once we decide to do that. For now, I'm enjoying watching them explore the kitchen, hopping and running around and of course pooping everywhere.

Our (nonexisitent) Etsy Store

I have an account online for our Etsy store to correspond to our Farm. It's called HeartSong Farms (the one without a plural was already taken). Once we get our stuff going we'll be selling handmade goods from our homestead. Here's a label I've designed for clothing and quilts

Does the background look familiar? It should, it's our land! I'm convo'ing a label maker to see if this is infact a workable model for the sew-in cloth labels. I have another less fancy one that would be a folding tag with just the basics, no pictures. What do you think? Too busy? Too much info? Esty store name instead of blog?

Our dream of farm ownership isn't just a weekend project. Its goal is to become a working (read: profitable) endeavor. There won't be an animal, project or whim that isn't going to be producing or giving back to us in some way. Already, I'm working on a few things to start us off; spinning angora fur and quilt making. I'll also sell raw and finished supplies and other crafty items.

I got an email from our bunny breeder. She's got a full English pointed white doe available. I'm excited! While the FE tend to matt quicker it's still good quality wool and it would give me a doe to breed if I so choose. Duncan's wool is softer than silk and shines like silver in the light. I want to breed him before he gets too old.

Anyway, just a little update. Our Etsy store is up but there isn't any wares up yet. Any comments or suggestions on our labels would be helpful!

Duncan. Our one and only Livestock

We got a French/English Angora mixed rabbit a few weeks ago. He's our first venture into livestock for the farm. He'll provide us with wool a few times a year that we'll sell on Etsy and possibly locally for a nice bit I hope. It all depends on the market.

Here he is. Duncan McCloud.

Awww, so fluffy and cute! It's hard to tell how big he actually is so here's a photo that shows him compared to a 32oz water bottle.

Yeah, he's huge. But most of it's 3-4" strands of the softest, fluffiest cloudy material I've ever felt. It's going to be funny seeing him shaved come spring. We're looking for a mate for him and will be building him a larger hutch more off the ground this weekend.

And just because he's so cute...

We might have more livestock news coming soon. Cross your fingers!