It has been busy around here lately as I wrap up a lot of projects!

I chipped my tooth recently, so we spent Thursday heading to the Dentist in Sherwood.  It was a filling they had done, so they fixed it at no charge, which was nice, but by the time I got home the only thing left to do for the day was sew.

Friday was butchering day, so I headed out to the butcher with my 15 birds.  It really was nice to wrap up the project.  I am glad to have meat in the freezer and to have 15 less mouths to feed.  My chore time is being cut down considerably lately.  After dropping the birds off at the butcher, I took Daphne to the park to play while they did the processing.  As we were driving away, Daphne burst into tears asking me where here chickens were demanding that we go get them back.  I heartlessly told her that we would go pick them up  but that they would no longer be alive.  I didn’t know what else to tell a 2 year old.  When we went to pick up the birds to take home, she was perfectly happy to help load the car.  She carried each chicken and put it in the box happily stating that it was a chicken.  And I though she was going to be traumatized.  I guess I need to do a better job making sure she knows what is going on.

When I got home and got Daphne down for a nap I headed out to the chicken coop to rearrange some things.  The laying hens get better treatment now that I have more time for them.  We got them a new shelter a few weeks ago to solve many of the problems I was having keeping them in such an awkward space.  I took it back out and cleaned it and bedded it down with shavings for them.  I also made a door for it so that I could keep them out during the day for a while.  That side of the house is always in shade, and they don’t need the shelter during the winter.  They were trying to lay eggs in there, and they were not super easy to get out, so I decided to lock them out during the day and let them in at night.  This is all working really well.  I made the door for them out of some lovely, scrap, pink fabric.

They also got a feed and water upgrade.  They were having to eat and drink out of smaller containers, but with the meat birds gone and not needing the big feeder and waterer, the hens got it.  It is nice for them to have free choice food and water again, and I think that they are much, much happier.  Of course, being neurotic and pregnant, I spent about an hour sterilizing it for them after the meat birds had used it.

I worked on setting up the run for them more as well.  At this point, I probably won’t do much more for the summer.  The chicken coop used to block off half the run in the back, and since the birds spent the most time there, it had a lot of bedding and poop and stuff in it.  It is built up about a foot higher than the rest of the ground.  I aim to slowly have that compost down and spread it along the side of the house.  The chickens now have a lot more room to run around in, which is better for everyone.  I also need to put a top on the nesting boxes so that they are more willing to use them.  Chickens don’t like to lay unless they have privacy.

I went out on Friday night with a friend and her daughter.  I ended up getting my first pedicure.  It was a very lovely experience, especially being pregnant with such swollen feet.  It is not something I plan to do often, but it was nice and relaxing.  While the rest of me is covered in dirt, my feet don’t look right being all pretty!

Today, Jared and Daphne helped clean the back of the car out a little more.  I hope to complete the rest of it.  We then took an adventure to Portland.  I got my hair cut by a student at the Aveda Salon.  It is nice because the services are very inexpensive, but you get great service.  I got the best hair cut of my life from a girl who spent a lot of time working and learning.  It only cost me $10.  You can’t get a cheaper haircut, that is for sure.  I definitely recommend going there for anything if you live in the area.

Jared, Daphne and I then headed to a photo shoot.  My friend Christy from Studio Christy did some maternity photos and some family photos for us.  I think that she did a fabulous job, and I can’t wait to see them.  I will definitely share them when I do.

We have been having very hot weather here.  It has been record setting.  I was just complaining about the wet, but now it is very hot.  It got to be over 90 degree here today.  The garden needed  a good watering.  My peas are growing nicely.

As are my artichokes!

The rest of the garden is catching up.  It looks barren, but the plants are growing already.

This is Daphne sleeping in her own bed tonight.  She has been going to sleep in her own room as long as she gets to sleep with a baby and read any books that she wants.

Aren’t they cute when they sleep?

Ok.  My feet are swollen to great sizes, and everyone around here is tired, so Goonight!

I took the chickens to the butcher on Friday, and what a RELIEF it was.  Though I am happy to put food on the table for the family, I am not happy with the project in general.  It takes an awful lot of grain to raise a chicken from hatching to finishing.  Most of it is soy and corn that has been genetically modified.  Rabbits do not require those grains to finish (in fact they are not great for them).  People say to eat less meat to be more environmentally friendly.  Though I understand where that viewpoint comes from, I do not totally agree.  I do, however, have respect for the amount of feed that is necessary to make the flesh on the chickens.  I started with 10 birds in March, and I am surprised that I didn’t lose any of them.  The Cornish Cross birds are not at ALL a hardy breed, so I am happy that they made it through the rain and the heat and the other stresses we have had around here lately.

Chickens are easy to process yourself, but you have to have equipment and time, guts and know-how.  I have none of that.  Also, I live in a very residential setting, and my neighbors already have things to say about chickens at times.  I am not sure the reaction I would get if I set up a butcher block and picking station in my garage to process birds.  Instead, I take them to the butcher.  There is a lovely family that runs Mineral Springs Poultry in Willamina.  It is a family operation, but they do a fantastic job.  They have always been very helpful getting my animals processed (they did the goats last year), and they do a great job in every regard.  Even though I may not be the best poultry raiser in the world, they have helped me along without ever making me feel that I was doing something incorrect or wrong.  Additionally, with only a small amount of animals to do, I was happy to pay the less than $2 price tag to have the animals butchered, picked and bagged for me.  I got to play in the park with Daphne while the job as done rather than get blood all over my shirt and anger my neighbors.

I also has my 5 Chukar processed as well.  They are actually quite big, and I am excited to make a nice European meal out of these little birds.

I may, in the future, process my own birds, but in my current situation, I am happy outsourcing.

So, another project has come to a halt.  The freezer is full of lovely meat.

The baby rabbits sure are getting big.  I don’t feel like they are making as many changes lately, so photographing them every other day or so seems to be working fine.  However, I do still see the changes when I photograph them.

The Angora bunnies are getting bit.  Their toenails are pretty sharp, so Daphne loves to play with them, but she often ends up with little scratches everywhere.  They go away quickly, but I feel the sharp little claws when I hold them as well.  For whatever reason, when Daphne goes to get a rabbit to play with, she only gets the white bunnies.  I am not sure if she prefers them or if those are the only ones she can see in the dark with the light off.  I much prefer it that way.

It looks like Thing 1 is a wonderful mama.  She is able to keep up with producing for all 12 of the babies.  She hops in the box no matter what time I bring it out to feed them, and she stays long enough to get them all fed.  I have not had a problem in the last few days when I checked with anyone needing more food.  Even the small and runty baby I was talking about before really started to pick up speed and can no longer be distinguished from the other rabbits.  When I brought them in from nursing today, I discovered that someone that its eyes open, so they are really starting to progress a lot.  The baby that was wounded is completely better.  I did have to spend time draining it every day, but the TLC paid off, and it is now running around with just a small scar that is working to heal.  It looks like all 12 are happy and are going to make it with no problem!

The Angora rabbits are also progressing a lot.    They have learned to hop and they can get in and out of the nesting box with no problems.  I noticed that they were trying to much on their mamas food the other day, so I gave them a little bit of pellets to chew on.  They were very happy.  So, they are starting to eat.  I put them outside with mama today during the day so that they could nurse more and so that she could be in charge of them.  If they are old enough to cause trouble, they are out of my disciplinary range.

They sure are getting cute, and they hear about it every time I talk to them.

Looking more and more like Angoras every day.

The chocolate candidate.

This is “Blaze” with the white leg (not a good thing).

I have been doing a lot of evaluation of the rabbitry lately, and I think that I have come to a conclusion of where I want to go.  This may not be the plan that works out in the next week or even in the next year, but I’ve weighed all my options and made all of my decisions.

I currently have 1 100% German Angora doe, 2 100% Californian does (these are meat rabbits), 1 ~80% Black German Angora Doe, 1 ~80% Blue German Angora Doe, a 60% Torte German Angora Buck and a Black 50% German 50% French Angora Buck.  That is a lot of information to take in, but the important thing to consider is the percentages and the breeds.

I LOVE the German Angora breed.  They are large rabbits, have lovely temperaments and they produce a very dense wool.  Since I keep them for their fiber, I like this.  My 100% German doe eats the same as the other does and produces MUCH more wool every 90 days.  Also, the German breed is a white breed, and though I do like the colors that can be gotten by crossing German and French, when all is said in done in spinning, I can dye white any color I want.  I am limited with the other colors.

I am also enjoying the idea of raising rabbits for meat animals.  There are so many benefits and so few drawbacks.  With raising meat chickens, it is a fast project, but it is a smelly project and a project that ANYONE ends up hating at the end.  The birds have been engineered over the last 50 years to grow MUCH more quickly than is healthy.  Though I do appreciate the feed conversion, I don’t appreciate how unnatural it is.  The birds are disgusting.  They don’t forage, and they die quickly from various health problems if kept longer than 12 weeks.  Though I do plan to raise a few birds once a year to have a chicken dinner here or there for my family, I do not plan to use Cornish Cross in the future.  That leaves me with the problem of having a much tougher bird that takes 2 times a long (and 2 times as much feed) for a smaller bird.  These are the drawbacks.

Rabbits are a completely different story.  Rabbits can finish to 5-6 pounds in about 8-9 weeks.  They are raised entirely by their mothers at that time.  Though the feed conversion is about half that of the Cornish Cross chickens, it is a pretty good conversion, especially considering that the babies nurse from their mother for the first 3 weeks almost exclusively.  A lot of people think that rabbit tastes a lot like chicken, some people can’t tell the difference.  It is one of the most nutritious meats available in our market.  It has more protein and less fat than any commonly eaten meat.  And yet, it is something that is disregarded by and large by mainstream America (Europe appreciates rabbit).

I bought two Californian meat rabbits last year with the intention to breed.  They are Thing 1 and Thing 2.  Now that I am in the middle of raising them, I am realizing that keeping 2 may not be necessary for my own personal meat.  Rabbits can be bred 4 times a year, and they produce average litters of about 8.  If I kept my one meat rabbit in heavy production, I would have 32 rabbits from this one doe alone.  I don’t need to double that.  As it is, 32 is enough to roast whole rabbit almost every Sunday dinner througout the year!  I have decided that I am going to sell Thing 2, and keep Thing 1 for this purpose.  Thing 1 is turning out to be a great rabbit.  She is a great mother now that she has figured out she is supposed to nurse the babies.  She instinctively had the kits in the nesting box, and they survived.  A lot of first-time moms are air-headed and have the rabbits on the wire, where they eventually die from exposure.  Though she had a very aggressive temperament (I have scars on my belly from one particular episode), she has mellowed out incredibly since having the babies.  She is definitely on my keeper list.  I am selling Thing 2 because she hasn’t produced a live litter for me yet.  She lost her first litter and did not take to being rebred.  That’s not a terrible sign, she can be bred, that just is the decision a breeder has to make.  Who has the best characteristics?

I NEEDED a mature buck very badly so that I could breed the meat rabbits before a year of age (rabbits get harder and harder to breed as they get older).   I spent almost a year looking for a meat specific buck, but I was unahppy at the thought of keeping a meat animal around simply for breeding 4 times a year. I found someone who was selling out of their Angora herd, and she had a 50% French 50% German rabbit for sale.  I bought him.  He is the daddy of both of the litters I currently have on the ground.

Angora rabbits are a dual purpose breed.  They can be used for meat and for fiber.  Though a lot of fiber people will tell you that it is horrible to butcher such a lovely creature, I tend to stand with the other breeder who believe that it is a responsible thing to cull out the rabbits only keeping and/or selling the ones that exhibit the best of the breed.  Don’t pass on characteristics that don’t help set the breed standard.  The most commonly used Angora breed for meat is the French Angora.  I was happy to use my buck (his name is Poe) to breed to the meat rabbits.  Not only will the stock exhibit excellent meat characteristics, I am not being forced to keep a meat-specific buck around who I am only feeding for his breeding ability.  This is a win-win situation.  That said, I am not planning to keep this particular buck forever.  His hair has too much guard hair in it for me, so I hope to retire him at some point and use him for fiber only.

What I would like to do is obtain a 100% German buck OR breed Daisy to a 100% German buck.  I will then be able to keep any kits from the litter that work for my purposes and sell the rest.  That would go a long way to making a start to a German herd to preserve any lines that I want and still have the wool density and the sweetness of the German Angoras.

On the meat line, I plan to find a 100% French buck that I can use to breed to the meat doe/s.  This will give me the best meat body available while still maintaining animals that produce for me as well.  As soon as Thing 1 runs out her life span, I will consider replacing her with a 100% French Angora doe and breeding her for meat purposes.  The French have coloring in them unlike the Germans, so I can also add any color to the herd that I like.

As for the other three colored animals I have, I have no plans for them.  I enjoy very much having the color around, so they will stay in the herd for my own purposes and pleasure, which is just fine with me.

Currently, this means that I need to set up an appointment to butcher the young litter I have, since they are meat rabbits.  I need to have room for them in the freezer!  That is a lot of meat produced.  I have also decided that any of the black Angoras that are not suitable for me will also go to the butcher at that time.  One of the black ones has a white foot, another has a white leg and yet another is looking like it will not be black at all.  I will keep the bunny if it is going to be chocolate colored, but anything else is undesirable at this point.  The REW (Ruby-eyed-white) babies will all be for sale, since they are looking very good in many regards right now.  I’m glad Daphne likes playing with the REW rabbits the best because they need the socialization!

A while ago, I was chatting with my friend telling her that there was one more kind of diaper that I wanted to try making and using.  Although I do have plenty of diapers, I thought it might be wise to try making some one-size fitted diapers that I could use throughout the diapering life of the baby.  Julie had a diaper that she really liked, so we spent time studying it and decided to make a version of our own.

These fitted diapers are set to fit from birth to potty training, though they might not be suitable for a child that has not been potty trained by 3 years of age.  They are made of cotton velour on both the inside and out.  I made 15 total diapers.  These are the colors of velour that I could find that I really liked and thought were unisex suitable.  I am trying not to make too many pink and blue diapers that seem gender specific because I plan to use these on future children or sell them to people who would want to use them on future children.

A lovely brown diaper (I am LOVING brown right now).

I got this color because I have never used it for any other diapers.

I made a bunch of white diapers with different color insides.

Maroon is one of my favorite colors always.

Everyone needs sage colored diapers.

This is called celadon.

This is what the diaper looks like folded out laying flat.

All the photos were taken at the large setting.  This is what it looks like snapped down to be worn by a newborn baby.

These are by far the best diapers I have made yet, and I am very excited to get started using them some day.  I am contemplating making some more if my list of things to do dwindles quickly.

When Daphne was little I borrowed a nursing pillow from my sister.  It was one of the things that I really liked a lot, and I was not willing to go without.  In my many trips to the fabric store I discovered that they have pillows that are the same shape as the Boppy brand of nursing pillows.  At my fabric store, they were over with all the stuffing and genaric pillows.  I picked one up without a cover for $10 a month or two.

Though I was excited to make my own covers, I have been putting it off over and over again because it is fairly complicated.  I bought the wrong length of fabric 2 times, and one of the zippers I got for the pillows disappeared into thin air.  After much persistence, I was finally able to complete them.  Though it would have been easier to just buy a generic pillow, that wasn’t good enough for me.  Not only are they very expensive, they are the same handful of covers that every other nursing mom has.  I decided to make some covers with my own personal style.

I thought it wise to make 2 different covers so that one can be washed if the other has been soiled (when would that every happen with a newborn?).

I had this fabric laying around that I have been meaning to show my grandmother (I was actually going to make some napkins for her for Christmas).  I decided it would make a wonderful cover.  It is a brown and white cow print, which is very fitting because my family raises Shorthorn Cattle, which are brown and white.

The under side of both covers is this white minky fabric.  It is very soft and lovely.

This is the pattern for the second cover.  I really like brown and blue together right now.  It is just girly enough for me.

I am so happy to be fully equipped in the nursing pillow department.  I’ve still got more sewing projects to work on and show you, so stay tuned.

Ok, so this really applies to the last two days.  This weekend Jared was hit with some kind of bug that wiped him out completely on Sunday.  It made the rounds, and I finally got it on Tuesday.  Yesterday morning, I was sitting down, and I literally had NO energy to do anything.  I sat with Daphne and sang songs to her for a while, which always makes her happy.  She wasn’t interested in being too active either.  The weather is getting pretty hot here, so besides getting a bit of cleaning done and just spending time with Daphne, the morning was a total wash.

I saw a popcorn commercial a few days ago when I was hungry late at night.  Of course I went to the kitchen and made some for myself.  I love popcorn with lots of butter.  I always think that I am going to make too little, but the pot always overflows with popcorn.  It’s OK.  Daphne enjoyed the leftovers the next day.

Whenever I pull the camera out, Daphne loves to give me smiles.

Check out the dirty face!

My friend Rebecca came over during the afternoon and we went to the Nature Preserve sponsored by the Rotary Club in Mcminnville.  It is a lovely little spot to go for a walk, and it wasn’t so big that we got lost.  Rebecca has a baby that is about a month old, so the walk was nice for everyone.  Daphne loved seeing the river and the wild flowers growing everywhere.  I think it will be a place that I go back to more and more as it gets hot.

I still didn’t feel really well this morning, but I decided to put on a good face and try to do some of the usual activities that we do on Wednesdays.  I managed to make it to the grocery store, and Daphne was so helpful.  She helped me push the cart around, and she didn’t fight me at all, it was such a relief.

Even though story time is not happening for another month, we went to the library to return some books and get some more books.  Daphne was thrilled.  Of course, nothing is better than watching the hampsters run around.  They have been asleep every other time we have stopped to look at them, so she was thrilled to see them running around.

After the library, we ate a snack while playing in the park and went swimming.  Daphne was wiped out when we got home, so she ate her burrito and took a nice long nap for me.

I’ve been wanting to make something special for the past little bit.  Though I’m not craving sugary things really, I do enjoy a nice treat here and there.  I had some marscapone cheese in the fridge, so I decided to make a tiramisu.  I used a recipe from Food Network, but I altered it to have almost no sugar.  Instead of ladyfingers, I made some cookies that were whole wheat with no sugar (recipe coming soon).  I dipped the cookies in coffee instead of using ladyfingers.  It looked really good, but I haven’t had it yet because it is still setting.

I managed to sit down and completely my lovely one-size fitted diapers.  Julie and I have been working on them for some time.  I will post some photos tomorrow.  I think that I will not be able to stop, and the second I finished them I considered making some more.

Since it was so hot out, I took Daphne outside with me to do some chores.  She enjoys running around out there.  She helped me water all the rabbits and she made a nice attempt at watering the garden.  I have a lot of chores to do now that I have chickens and baby rabbits going.  Thankfully, I’ve got an appointment to butcher my chickens on Friday, and I must say that I am not one big sad about it.  They look like mindless drones to me.  I got a quick photo of them sitting in the shade this afternoon behind the fence.  Maybe you will see the same ugliness I see in them.

I decided to clean out the nesting boxes the baby rabbits were in.  I took them all out and let them play outside for a while while I did it.  You can see the size difference for sure now.  The meat rabbits are getting hair on them now though, and they will have their eyes open by the end of the weekend, so I think that they will look like rabbits soon.

Can you find 20 babies here?

The angora bunnies are getting more and more cute every day.  They look like real miniature rabbits, and it is hard to believe that 10 mintues of nursing a day has gotten them as big as they are.  Their ears stand up, and their eyes are open.  They even are getting the hopping motion down.  Though they sleep all day with no attemps to get out of the nesting box, the second I put them down outside they started to hop all over the yard, especially my little odd colored man.  I need to figure out what color this is.  It sure does have a lot of personality, and I would be sad if it exhibited the broken agouti gene.  I’m having a hard time deciding who to cull, and the faster I find out the faster I can attach or detach myself from this bunny.

The little white bunnies sure are cute though!

Of course, Daphne is helping me socialize the bunnies.  They get held and played with ALL THE TIME!

I decided that I wanted to make a really nice dinner so that I don’t hate eating food so much.  I had thawed some Sirloin steaks, so I got busy.  I made a Ceaser salad, rosemary potoato fries and steak with mushroom, leek and scallion.  It sure was tasty.  The meat is from our family ranch, and it was cooked perfectly, so nice and tendar.  Daphne had no problem getting bites of it down, which is not the case with all meats.  I sure am excited to get some Tiramisu soon to wash it all down.

I managed to sit down and spin a few rolags of Angora fiber last night while Jared sat and talked to me.  It was nice.  I plan to do the same thing again in a few moments providing that there is nothing else that needs my attention on the computer.

Our little town has an outdoor pool just a few blocks from our house.  We got a pass last year and enjoyed going on over and hanging out in the evenings when it was feeling really hot in the house.  I hadn’t seen any information about it opening up, and I was starting to get a little worried about it.  It turns out that I was not looking in the right places.

I discovered today that it will be opening up on June 26th.  My goodness, we have to wait another month, REALLY!!!!

Here is the information:

Public Swim
Monday – Friday 12:00-3:00 pm
Monday – Friday  5:00-8:00 pm
Saturday          12:00-7:00 pm
Sunday            12:00-4:00 pm

Family Swim
Sunday             4:00-6:00 pm

General Admission:
Students/Seniors $2.50
Adults                 3.00
Children under 2    free
Family Swim         7.00/family   (Sunday 4-6pm)

I am excited to jump in the nice cool pool when it opens.

Mondays are usually pretty boring around here.  It is always sad to send Jared back to work and be “on my own” even though he is on the other side of the door if I really need him.

I spent about 2 hours this morning cleaning the house.  I got the laundry sorted out and cleaned the bathrooms.  I even managed to get on my hands and knees to scrub the floor in the bathroom and the laundry room.  There are still so many little things sitting around the house that need to be put away.  As I slowly work on it, I realize that I am getting closer and closer to having the baby, and all this work is not for naught.

I finally moved into the kitchen to get some good food going to keep me energized.  I decided to make some jerky.  I have some rump roasts in the freezer from our family’s ranch.  I thawed one out this weekend so that I could get some jerky made.  After cutting it with the grain into thin slices, I got it soaking in vinegar.  According to my preserving class, soaking the meat in vinegar for 10 minutes before marinating it will help to kill any microorganisms that might survive the drying process.  I then got it in the marinade.  I will be breaking out the dehydrator again tomorrow so that I can have jerky for snacking on.  I sure hope the jerky turns out to be tasty.  It just looks like raw meat now.

After several days of dehydrating onions, I finally got them all done.  That sure was a lot of onions to dry out.  You dry them to paper like consistency.

After spending a minute or two in the food processor, I had made onion powder!

I happened to hear on the radio that that Multinomah County Fair happens on Memorial Day Weekend.  I decided that I was going to check it out on Monday if it was still going on.  I discovered that today was the last day.  It is only a 3-day fair.  Even though Multinomah County is the most populated county in the state, it is also the least agricultural.  County Fairs seem very agricultural to me, so I was unsure of what to expect.  The good news is that it was a free event, so even if it totally didn’t work out, I was only out the gas it took to get there and get back.  I invited Julie to come with me. and she accepted.

I DID have quite a bit of fun, but it was definitely my least favorite of all the fairs I have been to.  There were no livestock, ZERO.  The “rabbit show” that we saw was simply a display of many different breeds of rabbits that were sponsored by a local company.  People voted on their favorite breed.  Though I liked seeing the different breeds, one of my favorite things about county fairs is seeing youth involved in worthwhile learning actitives.  This seemed to be more centered on the rides, which I had no interested in participating in.

We did find ways to have fun.  We managed to watch the duck races, which Daphne thought were mildly interesting.

They also had a great little tent with activities like what we saw at the Agricultural Festival.  Daphne especially LOVED the corn sand box.  I have an idea to make her a sandbox so that she can play in it.  She really has been interested in the sandbox idea lately.

Daphne even got to milk a cow (no, not a real cow).

She also got a chance to do her own duck racing.

We had an awful lot of fun, but it’s not the kind of fun that I would expect from a fair.  I am looking forward to taking Daphne to the Yamhill County Fair and the Harney County Fair later this summer.

When I got home, I had chores waiting for me.  I fed the baby bunnies and fed my family (we had duck)!

The baby bunnies are doing well.  Thing 1’s babies seem to be hanging on.  As long as I keep the wound open and let it heal from the inside out, the wounded bunny seems to be doing well.  In fact, it has the most full belly of all the kits today (the little porker).  The skinny bunny is definitely still the smallest and the thinnest, but I let it nurse extra, and it never really has been lacking in food or starving.  I think that it will make it just fine as long as I keep an eye on it, it might just grow more slowly until the bunnies can eat pellets in 2 weeks.  They look cute in their nesting box.  That’s a lot of bunnies.

The Angora bunnies are a little more active these days in their nesting box.  Though, they do still spend a good amount of time asleep.  They will go out with their mama when they get more adept at hopping both out and back in to their box.  I have no need to have baby bunnies scrambling about the house when they are safe with their mama.  I estimate that I’ll move them out on Saturday.

They sure are cute with their eyes fully open and their ears up.  They are learning to hop like their mama, and it is cute to see them take their first hops.  They have been shaky on their feet until now.

I have always been a big fan of veggie salt.  It was an item in the house when I was a kid, and I have been a loyal purchaser.  Veggie salt is fantastic to spice up cottage cheese, eggs, avacado or any other place that you might use salt.

This winter, we were still getting a CSA share with tons of veggies in it.  Being pregnant and ill, we were not able to eat all the vegetables that we were getting from the CSA, and many of them were veggies I was not familiar with.  We were getting a lot of celery root, greens and rapini.  In a desperate attempt to try to use all of these things, I decided to try something different.  I searched the Internet for resources that would help me be able to make veggie salt, but for the first time ever, I was unable to find one single thing.  I decided it was time to go of into experiment land.

I had on hand a  few bunches of rapini, a bunch of kale, some carrots from the garden, my overwintering spinach (which turned out to be a lot) and two celery roots.  I chopped everything up really fine and put it in the food dehydrator.  I dehydrated the heck out of everything.  Most of it was greens, so as soon as it becomes paper like and breaks easily, it is ready.  The celery root was a little more difficult as were the carrots.  I eventually got them all to the consistency that would allow me to turn them to veggie salt (you want them DRY).

When everything was dry, I threw it all into the food processor and processed it until it was pretty fine.  Some of the celery root didn’t process down very well, so after processing it for a while and realizing that it all wasn’t going to turn into a powder, I put it through a sieve to take out any big chunks.  It made about 3/4 of a quart of powder.  I then added 1/3 of a cup of salt and 1/4 cup of oregano, thyme, rosemary and basil.  The final touch was about 1/2 cup of onion powder.

The veggie salt is fantastic.  You should try making this.  These veggies were going into the compost if I didn’t get really creative, and now I have a bunch of veggie salt that I can put on anything that I want.  It sure is tasty, and it doesn’t look to bad either.  This is one more place that I got creative and saved money from our budget while making something useful and tasty.

I apologize that this is not an exact recipe.  I am sure that you could mix and match the ingredients involved in the recipe.  These were things I happened to have on hand that I needed to use up.  I find that each ingredient has added their own flavor and the combinations of veggies you could use are limitless.

I am liking the format of summarizing what has gone on throughout the day.  They have been a little bit long lately, but I have some ideas to whittle them down and still provide other useful posts.  I am having ahard time sitting down at the end of the day.  It makes me extremely uncomfortable to sit down and do anything, and by the time I have read my email, I barely have any tolerance left to sit and type.  I’m debugging this, but that is why it’s been 3 days since I posted anything.

Sharing lots of photos has helped a lot with me documenting my life more.  Some weeks I used to go without picking up the camera at all, and I don’t like that at all.  Though not all the photos I am taking lately are professional quality photos, I am working on my photography skills in general, which is important right?

Friday was a fantastic day.  I try to go on lots of outings during the week to keep Daphne happy and busy and to keep me from going stir crazy in the house.  One of the regular things I do on Friday morning is go to Scotty’s.  It is a local play place that is indoors.  It is run by a church that allows free admission.  It has such a clean and friendly atmosphere, and it is nice to let Daphne play how she feels like for an hour or so.

The big news for Friday is that we went strawberry picking.  Though we are getting closer to that time of year, it is still a little bit early to get out and get lots of berries.  We got some rhubarb the other week from our CSA, and I froze it so that I could pair it with some strawberries to make some jam.  The early berries are great for jam because you don’t want to use overripe fruit in your jams.  I’ll post a little tutorial on the jam in another post.  The goal of picking strawberries was to get enough to make a batch of jam and to eat for a few days to satisfy the spring berry craving.

This is the third season that I have been berry picking with Daphne, and I must admit that I really love it.  The first year I just put her in a sling.  Last year, I just sat her down with a bucket of berries, and she ate whatever she wanted.  This year, she was actually helpful–well sort of.  You see, we are still working on colors, so when I told her to pick the red berries that sometimes meant that I got green berries.  She was so excited to help, so I spent a lot of time going around finding ripe berries and letting her pick them.  She really liked that.  The only problem is that she made up a rule that any berries she picked she got to eat, so a lot of the berries that I found, she ate (harumph).  All in all, it was a blast, and I totally plan to revisit next Friday to get some more yummy berries for eating next week.  The berries were totally gone by bedtime on Saturday.  It’s not like we love berries around here at all.

When I got the berries home, I washed them up and took about half of them for jam.  We only managed to pick a little less than 4 pounds in the 2 hours we were out there.  The picking was slim, and having a baby to watch really didn’t help.  However, those 4 pounds cost us only $4.  If we were to buy them already picked, we would have been paying $3 per pint.  Besides, they can’t weigh the berries that are in your tummy by the time you make it back to the register, and let’s just say there were a few of them in there.  (Ok. in all fairness, I held great restraint in eating while picking because I understand that not getting paid for something you grew is more than unfair).

While I was in the kitchen getting things ready for jam, I also got some onions on the dehydrator.  I decided to dehydrate all the onions that I had and make onion powder out of it.  This is the method I use for my veggie salt (yes, recipe coming soon, I promise).  I had WAY more onions than my dehydrator could handle, so the third batch is in there drying as I type this.  They should be done tomorrow.  The 2 batches I already did have been food processed into powder and put in a bag to be used in future cooking endeavors.

While Daphne took a nap on Friday I managed to get out and work on my herb garden.  I have always wanted an herb garden.  I had a pretty sucessful amout of herbs come out of the garden last year, but I was hoping to increase it this year.  I actually pulled up all the mature plants I had and ended up moving them around to put them all in the optimum space to grow me more herbs.  Now I have Greek Oregano, Chocolate Mint, Thyme, Marjorum, Parsley, Rosemary and Bay Laurel.  I am happy with the new arrangement, and if the plants don’t show any more shock from being moved, everything will go on for a nice herb season.

Before:

After:

I made some tacos for dinner on Friday, and they were tasty.  The strawberries made a fantastic dessert with some fresh whipped cream I managed to whip up.

Saturday and Sunday were rather uneventful.  Unfortunately, the camera is really giving me problems.  The battery is almost dead, and I misplaced the charger and the spare battery.  I’ve been through the entire house trying to find it to no avail.  I skipped 2 days of bunny photos because I knew I was almost out of batteries, and nothing else got photographed either.  I’m hoping to find the battery tomorrow, otherwise, I am going to be very sad.

I made some progress sewing the elastic into my diapers and then serging them.  I have very few steps left before my one-size fitted diapers will be totally done.  They are looking really beautiful, and it makes me feel good to have lovely diapers.

Jared and I took Daphne to the park today today play around.  Carlton was really hopping with people out wanting to taste wine for the Memorial Day Holiday.  More power to them.  Our town is so lovely because these kinds of events really do bring in a lot of money for the local people.  I don’t mind sharing our little piece of Heaven with people on the weekends.

The bunnies are doing really great!  I can’t believe the changes I have seen in the Angora kits since they opened their eyes.  It seems that the black ones did it a lot faster than the white ones, which I assume is related to the fact that all the white bunnies are albinos.  Now that they have their eyes open, they are becoming more and more adventurous.  Though they are still staying in the nest box for now, I have a feeling that that will change over the next few days.  As soon as they can get in and out without problems the kits are going back out with mama.  They are getting good socialization for sure, but their mama can do a better job raising them than I can when there is no danger of them being killed from the cold nights.  They do spill out to get their mama when it it time to nurse.

Happy babies in the nest.

I’ve still got my attention on Thing 1’s babies.  There are 12 of them, so though she happily nurses them when I sit with her and help her, she only has 8 teats (it might actually only be 7).  That means that some of the little porkers get fed really well while the rest of them get little to eat.  The little bun that I  noticed was small and hungry the first day that held it’s own, but I am seeing less and less growth.  I can feel the ribs of the baby, and when I check to see that everyone is full at the end of the feeding, I am always finding that there are consistently 2-3 that need more to eat.  Thing 1 has had no problem with me giving them extra nursing time, but I’m not sure that she has the milk supply for it.  I would just foster them over to Daisy, but the week difference is HUGE in rabbit time, so I think it would be a worse situation.  I actually did end up letting them nurse from Daisy before her own babies got a chance tonight.  They seemed to be more full and happy than usual, but they were still very much more skinny compared to brothers and sisters.  If they manage to keep their own for another few days, their chances of long-term survival is greatly improved.  I’ll continue to foster nurse them and make sure that they get plenty to eat.

Chaos at feeding time.

This is a well fed nest of bunnies.

I have some other bad news.  The first day that Thing 1 had the babies, she was a little air headed, and she scratched one of the babies.  The wound looked like it was pretty bad, but manageable.  Over the next several days, I looked for the wounded baby (it is a black baby), but was never able to find the problem again, so I assumed it was not a problem or that it had healed.  On Friday night I was checking to make sure they all got fed and one of the black babies had  a misshaped tummy.  When I looked at it, it was in fact the wounded baby, and the wounds had gotten infected.  The hair in the nest had attached to the wound opening closing it so that it would not drain properly and so large absesses were growing.  I thought the baby was a gonner.  However, I cleaned out the wound (I’ll spare the gory details) and let the baby nurse an extra amount.  I’ve been keeping an eye on it every day.  I was sure the baby would die that night, but when I checked to see that everyone had eaten tonight, the wounded baby was the most feisty and the best fed of all the kits.  I’m not totally out of the woods on it yet, because it is still infected and needs to be cleaned 2 times a day, but every second the baby lives and is not listless and on its way down gives it a better chance of recovery and survival.  My hopes are high.

I took some family photos for Julie recently, and Daphne tagged along with me.  She thought she needed to be in many of the photos.  I did end up taking photos of her to oblige her, but she was so out of place in many of the photos I took!

She was trying to mimic a pose one of the girls was doing.

It must have been as good a time as any to take off the clothes and run around.

This is a blooper of the family, but Daphne really doesn’t belong either!

Always my little model.

This was in the middle of all the other photos.  Daphne really loves to sit at her stool like it is a little table.  This is how she ate lunch on Saturday.  A nice tasty Oregon burrito was consumed at her own little table.

Consider yourself updated.  Until tomorrow.