Rabbits

I am expecting the first of our American Chinchilla kits to be born any day now. To prepare for that I rearranged the rabbits into different hutches. Then I cut the wire on the end hutch were I put our doe Parslane so it would connect with the nesting box that Neil built for me recently. Funny, rabbits are so curious... Parslane was poking her head in before I even go all the wire cut.

I also put our buck in with our Chinchilla "mutt" does that I got last summer.

Hay Delivery

We had more hay delivered today. Three round bales for the cows & donkeys and 40 squares for the alpacas and goats. Depending on how cold the next two months are this maybe the last of our hay for this winter... we can hope anyway!

Fun with Fiber

I took the alpaca fiber that I washed and carded yesterday and wet felted it into "fabric" that I plan on making a knitting needle roll out of.

And just so I can keep track of dates... I put our American Chinchilla rabbit buck in with our doe Parslane this morning. I will leave them together for a few days and then move him into another does cage until all four does are bred. I hope to have bunnies for sale by Easter.

Snow.... wonderful snow!

We woke this morning to over 8 inches of snow and it was still snowing! This is North Carolina we don't get storms like this. The kids and I loved it... Neil... not so much. This is the most snow we have seen since we left Maine in 2003.

Out in the barn I found all the animals crammed in the barn. I am sure they were confused since we had over 60 degree weather all this past week and now more snow then most of them had ever seen. Chores took a bit extra time since I had to lug water and shovel snow off of the hay bales.

Back in the house we warmed up by the fire and spent the afternoon cleaning up the house.


Tonight I finished knitting up a pair of Mary Jane shoes for Mckayla's Cabbage Patch doll. She is so thrilled will the doll clothes I am making. I have a que of knitting projects I want to get done and a doll's dress is up there on the list.

Beef Jerky.. yum!

I am excited to say that I made my first batch of homemade beef jerky today. I, of course, used our own home grown Dexter beef for it. It was super easy since I have a jerky kit that came with my dehydrator.

I mixed a pound of ground beef with a salt cure and a spice blend loaded it into the jerky "gun" and formed flat strips of jerky onto the dehydrator trays. Turned the dehydrator on high for an hour and then patted them to removed excess grease and turned the temp down to medium. Took another 6 hours to get a good dry product. Both Neil and I were impressed. I will be making more soon I think.


Other then normal farm duties I prepared as much as I could for our coming snow storm tonight. I turned the water off to the automatic waterers in the barn so they didn't freeze and burst. Made sure there was enough wood for the fire for at least 3-4 days (we have been cutting it as we need it this year). Neil's Dad brought over a kerosene lantern just in case we lost power. Come on snow!

Drying carrots... the outcome

Here is a photo of the diced carrots all dehydrated. I got distracted and forgot to take pictures of the shredded carrots.

Cows, Carrots and Cabbage Patch

Cattle round up this morning. An interior cross fence gate came open at some point and the cows, donkeys and our male alpaca moved into our female alpaca pasture... meanwhile three of our female alpacas were out in the cow pasture. I think the gate was not shut tight after the kids were out there yesterday afternoon giving their cousin a tour of the farm. It took 20 minutes and some create bribing with apple wafers to get everyone straightened out.

I purchased 10lbs of Organic carrots on my last shopping trip and have been meaning to do something with most of them so they won't go bad. So, today I pulled out the dehydrator again. I shredded up enough carrots to fill two trays and then diced up enough to fill the other three trays.

The shredded carrots were done in just a few hours but I left the diced ones in overnight.

I finished up a cute little hoodie sweater for McKayla's Cabbage Patch doll tonight. I cast it on just two days ago so it was a quick knit. McKayla has requested more clothes for her dolls so I will be doing a few of these smaller projects in between larger ones.