rusasi-ma:

what happens when you only have four babies

you may enjoy knowing that this kit has only grown to look more like my teddy bear that went through the wash too many times

what happens when you only have four babies

just a little guy

march 29

well lads, spring is here. i’ve got nine baby birds on my porch and just as many kits in the nest box behind me.

someone needs to tell the weather to catch up, though.

like, it’s been nice and warm all week. i was in california for part of it, but at worst it seems to have only rained. temps in the high 50s and mid 60s, sun giving me energy to do things like fix the water lines, clean up a little in the barn, start cleaning out the filthy cages, and bring home three new rabbits.

(here’s one of them. her name is la niña)

and then it…snows? just out of nowhere? while i’m in the middle of finishing up my last four culls? and then it hails all night and snows this morning? the weather here is something else. the good news is, it’s sunny today, and even though it was a bit colder than usual, i wasn’t needing the snow coat for the chores.

so, what’s the updates? well. i have one litter of rabbits that are a week or so old now, and three due on the 31st. on friday i went with my roommate and AQF and bought six turkeys (two BB white, two BB bronze, and two BB black,) and three geese (mystery! probably just white pilgrims though.) the hens have started laying, but the muscovy ducks, to my knowledge, haven’t starting brooding yet. i’m trying to get the geese to set their eggs but so far no luck, though they are making nests and laying in them…just not really brooding yet. we’ve sequestered them into the old garden plot though, to make sure they’re accessible.

one of the geese, a gander named naruto, was being bullied by the others after the death of his husband (sasuke, of course,) so he was released from the garden and has paired up with helga the pekin duck, the last remainder of AQF’s ducks she’d had last year before we decided they were not for us. it’s too sweet to separate them, so for now naruto and his tiny oblivious wife live on

(turklings of various ages)

additionally, a chicken got caught in the pigeon coop and laid an egg, which greta and leftovers have adopted it, dutifully sitting on this strange giant egg and NOT laying any of their own despite my begging.

i still have things to do, though, before i can really be ready for spring. i need to build the last few racks and put cages on them, pressure wash the dirty cages and get them ready for growouts, but unfortunately my wisdom teeth have begun to rebel and at least i need to get them out. so that’s my wednesday, an hour of semi-consciousness and a few days of drug-induced coma and hopefully i am not too miserable. i’m not worried about the surgery or the pain, i’m just the world’s biggest weenie and hate not being able to eat. hopefully my partner can come up with a variety of ways to make mashed potatoes for me…

but that’s it from me. see you on the flipside, when i have the normal amount of teeth again.

WELL, IT SURE HAS BEEN A WHILE HASN’T IT.  do i have an excuse?  possibly.  is it a good one?  ehhh, probably not.  depends on if you consider winning NaNoWriMo worth missing an entire months’ worth of blog posts over ;p

but yes, for the uninitiated i am in fact a writer.  unpublished, but i have not up until recently felt my work was good enough for it, but maybe soon i’ll start annoying literary agents.  now that i’ve knocked out an enormous amount of my current draft through NaNo, (which i didn’t even come up with the concept for this novel until like a week into november,) that day may come sooner than we expected.  but yes, that’s kind of been all-consuming, and now that’s over i’m looking forward to doing more leisurely activities, like building cage racks ;p  (btw, i am in progress on a writing blog here, feel free to dm me if you want to URL; it’s not a secret but it’s decidedly 18+ so i won’t directly link.)

on the animal side of things, it’s been pretty par for course.  i’ve lost a lot of animals due to weather changes, but i have taken a break from breeding for a little while so hopefully the swings are less dramatic by the time i get back into it.  i plan to breed a couple of litters next month for valentine’s day babies!  i’ve also somewhat at least determined part of the problem - not only were the dramatic weather changes lowering immune systems, but i discovered that a not insignificant amount of my hay had gone mouldy and likely contributed to the problem.  so, new hay bale, lots of boxes and straw to snuggle in, and hopefully the rest of winter goes smoothly.

farm life has slowed down for the season, and in a way it’s been nice.  outside of writing, i’ve been struggling to find something to occupy my time with that is making me feel like i’m not just faffing about all day.  but this is kind of intentional, after all - i planned my projects so i could be done with them before it got cold, to give myself a break and keep me out of the cold.  but i am notoriously bad at taking a break, after all.  we can only hope i channel my energy into tanning pelts so i can whittle on my commission list and make some money to buy books with ;p

i have gone back to PT for my knee this time, and subsequently my hip, because it turns out it’s my hips after all and not just my knee.  i haven’t been going for very long, but i adore my doctors and it’s nice to get out of the house for a little while and exercise.  it’s been an uphill climb, though, even moreso than when i went for my back.  my hip/knee is more cranky, apparently, and with the colder weather i have been painful much, much more often.  i do really hope i start getting better soon, because i would very much not like to have surgery.

(basil, princess buttercup, and occasionally a random step-sibling come with me to almost every appointment much to the delight of everyone in the building)

last month also brought the thanksgiving holiday.  generally i prefer to celebrate harvest, and therefore i try to make it a point to cook things we grew on our land.  this year we were able to make almost the entire spread just off our land - roast rabbit, mashed potatoes, zucchini, deviled eggs, dirty rice.  green bean casserole and homemade pumpkin pie with farm eggs were also included, and AQF brought a rabbit to make gravy out of that she’d raised, along with chocolate pie from scratch and some delicious peppermint butter cookies.  one of my favourite things in the world is cooking for others, and it felt good to feed our little group from what we’ve raised was a highlight of the year for me.

(dirty rice is the most unappetizing thing on the planet but i promise, it’s delicious.)

it’s hard to believe it’s already december, but hopefully 2021 brings us new and hopefully less…agoraphobic things to look forward to.  i am excited for animal possibilities, being able to run again, and all the things i’ll read, write, and create.  especially rabbit shows.  good lord i miss rabbit shows.

my mental health feels like that one roller coaster that used to be at seaworld in san antonio and it didn’t have any like, trick, it was just a bunch of humps over and over again?  it was called the screamin’ eel or something like that, i don’t quite remember.  it had one huge drop from like thirty stories or something and then the rest was a bit boring to a coaster fiend like me.  where are the loops, the twists, the spirals?

well, actually, my brain coaster has spirals too so maybe i should end this metaphor.

it’s slowly easing back into the season of drear and rain, and with it comes a new sense of urgency to finish my outside projects before i am physically unable to do manual labour.  i can’t remember if i’ve mentioned it, but despite loving cold weather, i have some kind of issue where my hands and feet go numb after only a few minutes if it’s below 70F or so, making it very painful to do work in the cooler months and especially in the winter.  most gloves or thick socks do not help.  heated gloves are a bit better, but they are cumbersome and i am the kind of person who really relies on tactile sensation when working with my hands.

anyway.  it’s something i’ve just accepted, but it also means that i have to try and get all my outside projects done in summer before i am quite literally unable to make any meaningful progress on them.  combine them with my workaholic nature and well.

i’m burnt out.

i’m not going into it too deeply because the circumstances the boil down to said burnout are for my therapist to know, not my tumblr blog, but it’s affecting me pretty badly lately.  i am very tired and frustrated and it’s making it hard to do much of anything, much less farm chores.  but they need to get done so i will, but it’s like pulling teeth.  good thing i’m more stubborn than a mule.

on the animal front we’re doing well.  i’ve got plenty of baby bunnies with more on the way in the next couple of days, and i made a little road trip to pick up a new rex buck that i am very excited out.  and yes, i did remember to tell his breeder to give me some transition food.  i am done dealing with force feeding rabbits and out of nowhere deaths.

he is a handsome wideband amber who carries e (either tort or harlequin) and he will make some lovely babies with my tri girls :)

on the bird front, everyone is well.  my partner is almost done building the second movable coop, and there’s only (checks list)  three more left to make (maybe.  burnout may change that.)  the girls have started slowing down on the eggs and both my fridge and my time management are thankful.  i was hoping i’d have a lot more opportunity to sell eggs this year but unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way, and so far i haven’t had a ton of luck trying to sell chicks.  or any of the ducklings we have running around still.  i’m not sure if i want to raise them up for meat, though, since most of them are muscovies who are NOTORIOUSLY slow growers, so i’m kind of at a loss for what to do.

at least the turkeys are well.  the older royal palm is starting to get real feathers now, and the narragansett, blue slate, and chocolate are nearly old enough to leave the brooder as well.  i am excited to see them grow and turn into actual turkey-shaped things instead of vaguely hunched over chickens.  i have no real opinion of turkeys yet, since i have not experienced them in their adult forms, but so far i do like them.  they are cute, and despite the fact that a bag of rocks generates more electricity than their brains do, they are delightfully easy to brood after my duckling fiascos.

well it’s about to rain and i don’t want to have to walk around the pasture and get wet, so i guess i’ll go.  here’s to hoping september is a little better than august.

i forgot to update last week mostly because i was just vibing so hard on monday that i didn’t remember til tuesday night that i never wrote a post, then i decided to just wait.  but i mean honestly are we surprised?  no.  whoever decided to update this blog on monday should be fired, because i regularly just work too much on the weekend to remember to do anything except feed myself on monday.

that’s not to say that i don’t do anything on mondays.  quite the contrary, because i am capricorn’s posterchild and i don’t know how to relax.  in fact, last sunday i worked so hard through the heatwave that i nearly crippled myself, but come monday i was like ‘but what if i cleaned the tanning area and got a new batch ready…’  i can’t just sit around and do nothing.  i get it from my dad.  no, the problem is that i just spend so much time thinking about what i could be doing on my day off that i forget to do any kind of business-related nonsense online.  

so, the heatwave.  it wasn’t so bad for an ex-texan - stay in the shade, drink water, wear sunscreen, stand in from of the huge fan we bought to hang in the barn, you’re golden.  the weekend got into the mid-90s but i have been through many mid-90s days with much, much more humidity.  the rabbits that came with me from texas barely registered it as a blip on their radar, but a couple newbies needed some help.  overall, they made it through with flying colours, even the ones who were due to kindle the next day.  and as for me, i was able to build the last two 30x30 cage racks and get them up.  i am SO CLOSE to the barn being completely done that i can taste it, but alas i had to focus on other things this weekend.

those other things being:  repainting the kitchen.  now, i had it as a goal this year to finis the kitchen before the end of summer, and lads, summer is coming to an end.  after the heatwave it dropped back down into the 70s, and to be honest there’s been a couple of nights where i’ve needed to grab a hoodie to go put the birds up for the night.  on one hand, my aesthetic is more tailored to layers and leather jackets and boots, but on the other, i am very solar powered.  i am now racing the clock to get my outside work done before it gets too cold for me to do things easily.

anyway, the kitchen.  our house is very old and run-down, and i’ve been slowly but surely repainting everything.  i’ve done the living room/sewing area/halls and our bedroom, so now it’s kitchen time.  previously it was “once white but had a lot of mysterious black smoke? damage” and “we didn’t quite finish painting this wall so you can see the dark wood 70s wood paneling”, which is a beautiful combo with the yee haw cowboy wallpaper, let me tell you.

pour one out for the homies.  the horse wallpaper is no more.

now it is a nice sunny pastel yellow, and soon i will have chicken-related decor put up.  it already feels so much brighter and open, it’s astounding.  what a difference a nice coat (or four) of paint makes.  it’s not 100% done yet, but it’s already a huge improvement.  can’t wait til i get my new serger and i can make the new curtains and hang up the giant print of a dead rabbit i plan to hang above the dog crate :p

now i suppose i will go back to working on rabbit cages.  it’s not a particularly fun job - it requires a lot of drilling and screwing things together and standing up and squatting down repeatedly, as well as some upper body stability to hold things in place.  it’s a cocktail made to aggravate my bad joints in particular, but it’s gotta get done.

so close to getting everyone on the improved auto-water system, too.

so things move on.  we have another mobile chicken coop almost ready to go, and then we have two or so more to make and we can have efficient birds at long last.  after that, not sure what we’ll need to work on…maybe building a goat shelter?  more fencing (since it’s been put on hold to work on coops), the rabbit paradise?  the possibilities are endless when you own an old, abused plot of land.  for now, i need to go feed my rabbits and dote on them a little.  so i’ll see you guys next week (maybe)

gonna be a short one because honestly not a lot has happened.  i mean a lot has happened but not that much, ya feel?  nothing interesting, anyway.

biggest even on the farm is the advent of the Duckening, which is to say not one, not two, but three hen ducks hatched broods of, at minimum, eight ducklings.  so now i have a whoooole lot of fluffy little babies running around in my yard and it’s honestly incredibly distracting.

amber (above) and sapphire the muscovies are co-parenting again, but this time much more successfully as they brooded their own nests and just combined their ducklings once they hatched.  it is very adorable to watch them sitting together with their five billion babies crowded around them.  nevan, the cayuga, also hatched nine ducklings and is doing a much better job of mothering this time.  she is a fierce protector, which on one hand is nice to see but on the other she’s definitely not going to be producing any tame ducklings, i guess.

another new addition is the huge, white marshmallow of a rex doe named cloud nine that i got in exchange for finishing up some tanning work for AQF:

she is bred to AQF’s very fancy black buck named tokoyami, and i am very excited to see those kits but also a little stressed as that’s a lot of babies coming up soon.  again.  this time, though, hopefully i can make it work so i don’t have to make another donation to the reptile zoo (as much as i like being able to help support them.)

the baby train continues with cecil the rex kindling TWELVE (two DOAs, for a live total of ten,) kits on tuesday, then lincoln the holland lop following behind her with five (one fell on its head, one failure to thrive, for a live total of three,) a couple days later.  they are all GORGEOUS, and i cannot wait to see how they are built.  there’s only three nonbroken blacks, but the good news is i actually own holden so it wouldn’t be a pain to retry the litter again if none of them are workable for me.  if only there were some shows i felt safe enough going to…i’m about to have some really nice kits.  sigh.

in the garden things go well - the corn has begun to tassle and make ears, and i’ve been spending a few minutes every few days playing matchmaker and bapping the silks with a tassle or two to try and get some actual usable ears.  the green beans are starting to make a ton of beans (not quite enough to feed all three of us yet, but getting there!) and the potatoes have bloomed and are beginning to fall over.  the zucchini is about to blow me out of house and home (i can’t wait to make some zuke and potato gratin, counting the days.)  the tomatoes are juuuust starting to ripen up which is muuuch later than i’m used to coming from texas where tomato season starts basically in april, but i’ll be glad to get some regardless!  i have the first one picked yesterday primed and ready to chop it up on my tacos for dinner.  can’t wait.

this weekend i spent time getting more cages up, but now i’m stuck needing to cut more pipe, which is incredibly boring and not my favourite part of the process.  but it looks like i only need a couple more before i can take a break and order enough cages to fill the gaps that i’ll have once the other cages are up.  and then maybe i can get back to organizing the barn.  it’s only taken all year.

well i hear the instant pot going off, and i wanted to make some banana bread for dessert, so i need to get off of the computer and get some more work done.  see you all next week!

well, things got a bit better anyway.  i managed to throw out my husband and my roommate (okay, they went to a nursery of their own volition,) for about six or seven hours and yes, i did spend at least one of my hours alone lying on the floor in front of the fan simply Existing.

i also did laundry, fed animals, butchered three rabbits, and …something else, i forget, in one of the most productive days i’ve had in months.  and then the next day i was alone again for most of the day!  truly i am spoiled.  that day i mostly just chilled out and drank tea, but it was still wonderful.  unfortunately this comes after a pretty miserable week of me being locked in my office desperate for isolation in any way shape or form, but it’s getting better.  hopefully.  

the skipped week involved a lot of stress outside of that, too.  i had five rabbits go off feed, which meant that all of my precious little energy was put towards their recovery effort, and i had to rely on my companions to handle the birds and the rest of the rabbits.  fortunately two rabbits recovered well and are back to eating normally.  two sadly died, including my new beveren mix boy ginko, which came as a hard hit.  the last has been in limbo for weeks and i’m still not sure if she’ll recover, but hopefully i will find out the key to her eating again and she will bounce back.

this last week was better.  the only good thing about losing half a dozen rabbits last month is that i now don’t have to spend the time force-feeding and medicating them, and i have some more empty cages open to redistribute growouts better.  trying to regroup and focus on moving forward.  i’ve got some nice looking himis that’ll never see a show table but will still compliment my breeding project well, some rex litters i’m excited for, and plans for another rabbit-related road trip in the near future which will net me a very fun harlequin gene that should mean good news to my fur clients.

picture remotely related as this is mom of the rex babies, as well as our sidebar bunny for the summer layout.

my partner has gotten permission to return to the office to work, and while it makes me a little nervous, it is only him and one other coworker there in different offices, so the risk is pretty low.  i do feel a little like i’ve pressured him into endangering himself for my mental health even though i never even brought the option up - he offered.  but it has helped, unfortunately.  having the mornings to myself before my roommate wakes up is very much like how i’m sure normal people feel sitting on the porch with their coffee before work.

i’ve been trying to readjust my routine to try and maximise my perceived alone time in the mornings and at night, and it’s been somewhat working.  the roommates also went to a lumber store on saturday, leaving me alone for several hours again which helped.  it would be nice if we could plan something like that every week where i have some downtime to work on housework, but i still understand we’re in a pandemic and there’s only so much traveling that can be done safely.  however my roommate’s studio did open up again, and i’m not sure of the specifics of how it’s operating, but hopefully that will get them out of the house again for a little while a few times a week.

in other news, i will be a grandsnarent in approximately a month and a half, which is very exciting.  it’s not really “farm related” so i don’t talk about it much, but i’m dipping my toes into snake breeding very casually, and a couple days ago i got my very first clutch of ball python eggs!  it’s been an Event trying to tell if my girl was gravid or not, because there was some issue with her not taking during the original session of pairings, but she sure did pop out seven perfect eggs, didn’t she!  they are now safe inside the incubator under my helicopter eye, and somewhere in mid september hopefully there’ll be some babies!

pictured:  forbidden mozzarella balls

well, i’ve got AQF coming over to help do culls and bring me a new girl (hint:  her name is Cloud Nine,) today so i should get moving on lunch and straightening up the kitchen.  i have some Business Things to do and some cages to order since now i kinda know how many i can find in the barn in total, and writing a blog post isn’t conducive to any of those.  so goodbye for now, and maybe next week i’ll have more good news.