The Bane of My Existence

Do you see the three dark brown sesame seed looking dots on this squash leaf? You can click on the photo for a better look.



Those would be squash vine borer eggs. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I hate them. Last year, I fought viciously and daily to rid my plants of them with no success. I picked them off, tried to bury the vines above the damage to stimulate new root growth, tried to catch the vine borers themselves, used DE, and probably some other tactics I can't remember. I think I got one zucchini and that was it. It is said that in the South you have to lock your car doors in the summer; otherwise, you'll come back and find a bag of squash in the front seat.  Well, my car doors are wide open!  If you can grow organic summer squash near me, bring it on.  Hell, you can load up my trunk if you want to.  I don't see how anyone grows organic squash here.  I

Today I found eggs on my melon plants, winter squash, and my Zucchino Rampicante.  I have always read they don't touch winter squash, cucumbers or melons.  It is the summer squash they gravitate towards.  I chose to try the Zucchino Rampicante this year, rather than zucchini or yellow squash, because I read that even though it's a summer/winter squash, it is resistant to vine borers.  Apparently the vine borers in my neighborhood didn't read the same stuff I did. 

I just picked eight eggs off one of the Zucchino Rampicante plants.  I didn't even walk up front to check the cucumbers.  I'm afraid to.  I think I'm seriously going to cry.

Candace

Playtime

One thing that is important to me is giving the rabbits an opportunity to exercise and play.  The old chicken run is the perfect arena for playtime.  Jack always has the best time when I put him in the run.  He frisks about and bucks like a little rodeo broncho.  He ricochets himself off the wall, and runs laps of utter joy.  But, his favorite activity by far is digging holes.  He never digs too deep, but even if he did, the whole run is surrounded by buried chicken wire and bricks.  He's not going anywhere, so I let him dig to his heart's content.  He is such a wonderful rabbit with the best personality.  Here are some photos I snapped yesterday.  If you want to see a close-up of a photo, just click on it and a slideshow will pop up.  Enjoy!



Happy homesteading,


Candace

Rooster Count

One:  Napoleon, aka Nappy, bantam, Old English

Two:  Big Boy, silver laced Wyandotte, huge next to Nappy

Three:  Sir Elton, a bantam, mostly Cochin

Four:  no name, mostly Old English

Of the five chicks we bought this year, three are roosters!  We gave number four away last week, and now we are down to three.  Nappy, whom we've had the longest, is by far the loudest and crows the most often.  Of the three, he is the one that is most annoying to me.  Sir Elton has a very soft crow, and he only crows a few times a day.  Big Boy just started crowing and while his crow is definitly loud, he also only crows a few times a day max and normally in the morning.  Fortunately, none of them crow early in the morning, at least so far.  Nappy doesn't get revved up until about 7:30, and on a few occasions, around 6:30. 

We've decided to keep Sir Elton (named after Elton John).  We love his flamboyant feathers and his feathered feet.  Since we separated him from the other Old English bantam rooster, he has kept to himself.  He is not aggressive to the other roosters, nor they to him for the most part.  The fact that he rarely crows is a plus for him too.

I actually don't like Nappy.  His crow is shrill, and he has started attacking me when I enter the animal yard.  It doesn't hurt because he is so small, it just startles me when he does it because he comes from behind while I'm walking.  It's terribly annoying.  Nate loves him.  He is very protective of the older hens around Big Boy.  My goal was to get two bantam girlfriends for Nappy, but since both turned out to be roosters, I didn't really meet that goal.

Big Boy is coming into maturity.  He has started crowing and also mounting the ladies, or trying to mount.  A few of them do submit, but Nappy usually runs over and puts a stop to it before anything happens.  Even though he is 5 times the size of Nappy, he runs.  I am curious to see how this plays out.  The other older hens give Big Boy what for when he tries anything, and they end up chasing him away.  His two sidekicks (the light Brahma and black Australorp) are still a bit young, but I suspect if he stays around, they will be his primary hens.  I would like to keep him, so we will wait to see how his crowing develops.  So far, he only crows about once or twice a day for about 5 minutes.  No early crowing either.  Of course, now that I've written that, he will start crowing at 5:30 a.m. 

This is my rooster saga.  If the neighbors have not complained about Nappy, they should have no reason to cmplain about the other tow, at least for the moment.  We shall see how it develops.

Happy homesteading,

Candace       

Bunny's Babies

Pardon my absence, but work has been a literal nightmare lately.  It has totally sapped my energy and desire to do anything other than the basics and vegetating on the sofa.  Plus, getting those beds filled on top of everything else almost killed me.  Hopefully things are settling down now, and I can get back on the right path.

A few weeks ago, Bunny, my American Chinchilla rabbit gave birth to five kits.  I wasn't sure if she was pregnant, but I placed the nest box on day 28 anyway.  She did look rounder in the belly, but my only experience with pregnant rabbits is Olivia, and her wool totally disguises any belly roundness.  I also noticed Bunny moving the hay around in the nest box, and she ate plenty of it as well, so that really didn't help me decide.  I found her toys in the nest box more than once, so I thought she was playing around.  Then, one evening, when I was returning the angora kits to their mama, I noticed Bunny had totally outfitted her nest box with enough fur to choke a mule, and it was moving.  She didn't play around.  Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.  Her nest box was not like that a few hours prior. 

I've had Bunny for several months now, and I bought her as an adult.  I don't really know her background, but she has never warmed up to me.  She's not mean, just very timid around me.  Jack, my AC buck, whom I bought from the same place, also as an adult, is as friendly as can be.  So, knowing Bunny's timidness and not really wanting to stress her out too much, I left the kits alone and decided to check on them the next morning.  They were all fine the next day, and each morning since, I've been peaking in the nest box without touching them. 

I have trusted Bunny to be a good mama, and she has risen to the occasion.  I have pretty much left them alone until I needed to make sure their eyes opened.  So, here are the first pictures.  I have to say, they were really ugly until a few days ago. 

You will notice the fat white one on top of its siblings.  So I have four babies that look just like mama and daddy and one albino. 

I was curious about how a white one ended up in the mix, and while I know it's based on genetics because of my angoras, I didn't realize Bunny and Jack could produce a white baby.  The other four are the spitting image of mama and daddy.  Here is an interesting article on ruby-eyed whites and the genetics behind them.

http://www.fuzzylop.com/News_10_REW.htm

Technically, these are my first meat rabbits.  I haven't decided what I'm going to do with them yet.  I may sell this bunch to help recuperate some of the cost of the rabbitry or even pay for the rest of the cages I need.  So, we'll see. 

Happy homesteading,

Candace

Triple Threat of Cuteness

I have a longer post coming up, but for now, here is a quick peek at our 4 week old English Angora kits.  They are so cute at this age.  They are starting to show their personalities, and it's so interesting to see how each one is different.  Their wool is getting longer, so they are starting to look more like angoras, and it just amazes me how soft they are.  It looks like we have two blue pointed ruby-eyed whites and one blue tort.  Enjoy!

Triple Threat of Cuteness

Cutey patooty!

They would not sit still!

I love looking at them face on.  Are there eyes in there somewhere?

 Happy homesteading,

Candace

Top 20 Tasks That Have Been Keeping Me Busy

1.  Shovel dirt to fill the four new raised beds in my kitchen garden section.
2.  Cover the strawberries with bird netting after realizing the berries I stepped outside to pick were gone!
3.  Shovel dirt.
4.  Move perennials from the kitchen garden section to other parts of the yard to create a clean slate and to clean up the mess created when one flower overtakes another.
5.  Shovel dirt.
6.  Spend five minutes staring at the cute baby bunnies.
7.  Shovel dirt.
8.  Inventory my seedlings and start to plan what is going where.
9.  Shovel dirt.
10.  Dehydrate dill for future pickle-making.  I'm actually proud of myself on this one.  My dill always goes to seed before the cucumbers are ready to pickle, and I have to resort to purchased dried dill to make them.  That is senseless and wasteful when I grow dill every year.  I'm stoked to have my homegrown dill dried and ready for pickling season.
11.  Shovel dirt.
12.  Spend five minutes staring at the cute baby bunnies.
13.  Sand and paint old windows for a trellis project.  Three down and three to go.
14.  Shovel dirt.
15.  Start to direct seed some veggies into the garden.  Normally I don't put any summer items out until the first week in April, but this year has been so warm that I'm taking a chance.  I don't see any frost potential in the next week or two, so I'm jumping the gun by a few weeks.
16.  Shovel dirt.
17.  Research irrigation ideas for the raised beds.  This is what I think I'm going to do.  http://homestead.org/BruceAndis/The%20$8.16%20Do-It-Yourself%20Garden%20Irrigator.htm
18.  Spend five minutes staring at the cute baby bunnies.
19.  Shovel dirt.
20.  Wonder with all of the dirt shoveling going on why those blasted beds aren't full yet.

Happy homesteading,

Candace

Freak Out

So, this morning, I went out to check on the kits, and I could only find two in the nest box.  I saw a small drop of blood in the hay and started to panic.  As crazy as it sounds, I thought Olivia had eaten one of her babies.  I know mother rabbits will eat their babies, but to my knowledge, that happens shortly after birth.  It was an irrational thought because they will be two weeks old on Thursday, their eyes are open, and they are fat and healthy babies.  My irrationality came from the night before.  Normally I pluck Olivia and not shear her, but she made such a mess of her wool while lining the nest, I had no choice.  Plus, it's getting really hot fast, and I knew she would be more comfortable if I relieved her of her wool.  So, I plucked most of it and sheared her down.  Fast forward to this morning and my panic-induced conclusion was that she was so shocked at being sheared, she ate one of her babies.  I know it makes no sense because she is used to being plucked, and though I've never sheared her since I got her, I'm sure she's been sheared in her life.  And she behaved perfectly normal last night; she didn't act traumatized.  If anything, she probably felt cooler and better.  But what else could I think?  There were no signs of a predator attack, but that little drop of blood threw me for a loop.  I pulled the nest box out of the cage and searched it top to bottom and front to back.  The missing baby was definitely not on the cage floor, and I knew it just didn't spontaneously cumbust.  Just before going into full panic mode, I saw the hay in her bowl slightly move.  The baby had somehow crawled out of the nest box, into the hay bowl and was burrowed at the bottom beneath the hay.  I have no idea how it got itself into that bowl.  The bowl has really high sides and while the kits are starting to move around, I marvel at this one's ability to hoist itself up over the rim of the bowl.  In hindsight, I don't know why I ever thought such a thing could happen.  How could a mother eat her baby and only leave one small hint of blood?  She would have to be pretty adept at it, and to my knowledge Olivia doesn't even have that history in her background.  I apologized profusely to Olivia and begged her forgiveness for thinking she ate her baby.  I then proceeded to go inside and put a shot of whiskey in my coffee.  Just joking, but it did cross my mind. 

To make myself feel like less of a freak, please tell me you've had an irrational thought or two about your animals. 

By the way, I have two ruby-eyed whites and either a blue tort or a lilac tort.  I'll post pictures in a few days.