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.

march 15

happy ides of march! you know that tweet that’s been going around that’s like ‘you don’t think seasonal affective disorder exists until the sun comes out and you feel like you just did mdma?’

yeah. the sun’s out, lads, and that means there’s something to talk about again.

ahhh, spring on the farm. the sun’s out, the turkey’s learned to gobble, the hens are laying, the does are starting to lift, and the water pressure regulator busts and all the rabbits are once again back on cups and bowls. nuts.

so where have i been? well, mostly have extremely poor mental heath for a variety of reasons i am not going to go into on this blog. that, and going to PT for my knee. which is pretty much fixed! or at least i can walk without pain or a knee brace now! my hips are still not used to the idea of work again but we’re getting there. my giant bottle of ibuprofen is still a very close friend, however.

winter is a slow season on the farm, as to be expected. i had tried to raise some litters with varying success - a few made it, a lot didn’t; cold snaps and freezes did a toll on me again this year - but mostly no one wanted to breed. i spent a lot of time indoors writing on my novel (almost 140,000 words…nearly done with the first completed draft!), reading, and some small home improvement projects indoors. ironing out some kinks in my routine, my physical heath (turns out it’s worth running the central heat sometimes if it means i am not in pain every time i leave my office or fighting with the woodstove…) and other things. it was rough for a while, but it’s…been improving. slowly. but surely. i’ve been able to work a bit more on tanning and have already gotten some commissions out the door. the longer days and returning sunlight has really made a difference, too, and i’ve been able to get outside and get some maintenance done. like that pressure regulator that i can’t seem to fix and will likely have to replace

so i’ve got some does due in the barn, the geese have started laying, the turkey tom learned to gobble, the eggs are rolling out of the production line, and i’ve added another lady pigeon to the flock (her name is fish sticks; we stuffed her in an ivar’s bag after catching her. undignified, but the easiest way to contain her until we got back to the car where a cage was waiting for her.)

it’s still pretty muddy out and a little cold at night, but planting season is fast upon us and i’ve tasked my partner with cleaning up the raised bed and working on the crop garden this weekend for me so we can start planting.

and me? i’m going back to california on a transport/camping trip with AQF and other Approved Quarantine Individuals. and when i get back: put up new cages, clean out old ones, new grooming tables, new water line, plants, rodents, cardio, goslings?, and getting back into the swing of things.

so, a short (and admittedly a little late but i don’t want to remove my greeting,) post just to say that i’ll try to come back now that there’s something to speak on again. hopefully this year goes better than last year….in so many ways

i’m writing this at midnight because i know otherwise i won’t be able to.  i haven’t been doing well.  at least the animals are getting fed, anyway.

the fourth has been haunting me even to today.  while things seemed okay the day of, i have since lost four rabbits to related stress and two more that may or may not be related.  two of spooky’s kits, including one of my keepers, another rex kit that i was going to sell as a pelt, my mini rex project doe, and another of my keepers, the dam of which i no longer have.  in the middle of all this, rats took an entire litter of five out of the nestbox overnight.  this weekend i’ve been having to force-feed one of my himi does, knishes, because she’s not eaten in four days and is starting to bloat.  one of my fireworks stress does has finally started eating somewhat regularly again, but she’s incredibly thin and i’m still very worried about her.

i’m…tired.

This is on top of all the other things that weigh on me, like the water lines that have been broken all month but despite ordering more line within a week of the bust i still won’t get them til this week at the earlies, and my hen that is in icu because she was being bullied out of food and is now emaciated.  or the five turkeys we had die over the last weekend because they were just too stupid to figure out how to eat.

not to mention my own personal struggles, which…well.  quarantine is catching up to me.  it’s making it difficult to do things, which isn’t exactly where i wanted to be this year after finally getting my ability to function back after obliterating my knee, but here we are.  also, my knee still hurts.  like, actually a lot, lately.  i guess it’s been humid.

in addition to my neighbours so kindly helping me clear out cages, i’ve sold a couple of rabbits that i no longer need.  fiver and one of her buck kits went to a couple of folks down in california who are members of my discord channel, and tuned for lean went to a family to be a housepet and occasional stud for a lady and her girlfriend.  jimbo is going to go home with AQF, because i no longer need him, because last sunday i went on a road trip to the eastern side of the state to pick up my new herd sire:

his name is ginko, and if i remember correctly, he’s a beveren x new zealand mix (unfortunately i forgot to ask his parentage and birthday when i picked him up, and his previous owner won’t reply to my email.)  jimbo had always been a bit of a ‘he’s as good as i could get’, being a small-ish rex/nz cross with small VM marks, but ginko is extremely VM and already a big boy who will fit better with my meat lines.

AQF also brought me a “replacement” for hackeysack, a nicer, older black otter mini rex for the project.  she’s only been here a couple of days, so it’s still unknown if she’ll succumb to bloat like everyone else seems intent on doing.

i can’t even really comment on the birds.  they’re fine.  other than my orpingon hen, i suppose, though she’s plucky and eating well in her solitary pen.  the pigeons are able to enjoy a flight pen now that one of the chicken flocks is in the new mobile coop.  the last two turkey poults were taught to eat by dripping cherry juice on their food, so i’m glad that i stopped by the thorp food stand on my way back from the desert.  did you know that in eastern washington, they have signs that tell you what crops are growing in the fields along the highways?  i didn’t, but they do.  it’s honestly a bit delightful.  according to a friend who lives near spokane, they have christmas lights on the signs in december.

AQF and her roommate visited on thursday and brought over some bucks (and a doe,) for breeding, and hopefully things go better this time.  we redid the breedings for spooky and nova, so hopefully replace the litter that nova killed and the keeper kit that the fireworks killed from spooky’s litter.  we also re-bred tatties to AQF’s himi buck, and knishes to my dutch buck, though since she’s not wanting to eat i’m not sure if she’ll take.  guess we’ll see in august?

i should probably sleep, it’s late, i’m exhausted.  i have a full day of trying not to lose my mind tomorrow, and maybe getting some work done.  we’ll see.  it might just be another day of me pounding through this 800 page book i’ve somehow found myself halfway through over this weekend…

all in all, the fourth wasn’t too bad.  i mean it was still bad, but not as bad as it was last year.  having a friend offer to stream the entire charlie’s angels series on kast helped too.

i continue to not understand the appeal of fireworks.  it’s loud, it ruins the air quality, it’s rude to people with ptsd, anxiety, sensory issues, autism, or even just people who don’t like sudden, loud noises.  i went out to check on the rabbits (they didn’t like it, but weren’t too bothered,) and my closest neighbour fired off the biggest mortar i’ve ever seen and absolutely terrified all of my animals.  i put the birds up early so they felt a little more secure.

did you know that rabbits can jump/kick so hard when they’re frightened that they break their own spines?

Anyway.

At least they only fired them until one am or so, and not past three.

We’ve been busy this week.  Building more cage racks and getting rabbits on them, designing and building new chicken coops/tractors to make chores easier on me, running water line diagnostics, and more.  It’s been warm, which means I haven’t been as painful, and I’m feeling really good about things.

I don’t have many animal updates - I’m getting ready to send a few rabbits on a transport down to California, and we culled my beautiful rooster Kiryu because for some reason he just got so, so mean and I couldn’t handle it anymore. 

mostly my time is consumed with the never-ending worrying about how i am going to have cage space for both my pelt animals, which make my money, and my show animals, which are fun.  i am not sure how i can combine the two, either, at least not entirely, not without culling out half of my barn, anyway.  i unfortunately spent too long cultivating three distinct lines of very nice meat/fur rabbits and i’m not sure how best to combine them in a way the preserves the traits i was working towards.

anyway.

speaking of pelts, my taxidermy freezer got turned off for an unknown amount of days and defrosted everything inside.  which is a disaster, the extent of i still do not know and won’t until i am able to re-thaw those hides and see if they’re salvageable.  everything in there was either a personal or commission pelt.  which is just fantastic, as you can imagine.  all i can do i suppose is keep moving forward…

 a short post this week but that’s not really bad.  i need to go have my tea and get back outside to chorin’.  i worked so hard yesterday i’m pretty tired today, and i had a call with my grandfather (delightful; he needed advice for how to deal with a broody hen that’s adopted him who likely is sitting on unfertilized eggs,) which despite being a person i enjoy talking to, phone anxiety says that any call costs spoons, so i need a little pep to get back into it.

then i guess i should go make more pvc racks…gonna have even nicer legs than i already have from all that up and down squat action ;p

i leave you now with mr. chanel, ready to head to his new home this week.  good luck little dude!