I really don't know where the summer went.  o.O 

I hear the Farmer's Almanac was calling for a short summer and a heavy winter, and it sounds like they're right:  we got our first minor frost a couple of weeks ago.  We're able to leave the garden uncovered most nights, but there's been a night or two where it's gotten down to the 30s.  The days have been pretty hot last week, and the grasshoppers have been going mad.  I've decided that the early-flowering broccoli will be my sacrificial plant this year.  Not that I had much of a choice in the matter.  The tomatillos are going apeshit, but the quinoa never came up this year.

Turkey coop still not built yet, although we've hired a guy to work on it.  I did end up converting the wood trailer into a coop, which has been amusing--I keep referring to our "white trash turkeys."  They're getting big, and we have at least 2-3 toms.  One has a crooked toe on his foot.

The goats have started roaming, so we've pretty much had to keep them penned and resort to hay.  They've also scrunched down the back fence in the lower pasture to the point where they can climb over and get out, so no more keeping them down there.  *sigh*  I think I just need to rip out the wire and the weak post, put in a stronger one with cement, and build a wooden fence.  It'll definitely prevent the goats from getting their heads stuck--Brandie sent me a couple of lulus this year.  Two or three of them are dumb as rocks and keep getting their heads stuck.  Usually as I'm heading off to work and short on time.  *sigh*

Ben is still friendly, but has gotten a little weird about his neck again.  We need some serious grooming sessions after we pick up a rake for his undercoat.  Greg says he has a massive tick on his side, too.  Eww. >.<  He's been wandering pretty seriously, too, and we've had our first barking complaint from the neighbors.  To Ben's credit, it was a full moon and the coyotes have been singing like mad, but time to put the electric collar on him. *sigh*

Rabbits are doing well, although we're having a little trouble with the large hutch.  The large door has come undone a few times, resulting in "chase the rabbit" excursions.  One got away and made it under the stairs a few days ago, so we're pretty sure it's gone for good. *sigh*  Sucks, because we've found a couple of restaurants in town interested in carrying rabbit as a special.  Definitely time to switch breeds, although Hatasu has proved to be a very good mother.  We keep having to pull Nefertari's babies off of her and put them with Hatasu.  Nefertari is definitely not going to make it through winter.

Seriously, the end of August already?  GAH.

Yesterday, checking on the baby rabbits, we noticed that their eyes were juuuust beginning to open.  Ridiculously adorable.  :)  We think Nefertari is continuing to pluck herself bald, which is rather distressing.  She looks pretty moth-eaten.  Good thing it's summer.

All the adults are loving the fresh grass.   Yay, happy bunnies!

We got the four Toggenburgs from Casey today.  Two proven milkers, a yearling doe, and a yearling wether.  We'll butcher the wether come fall, but looks like we'll be heading into the milk goat biz next year.  *facepalm*  What are we (I) getting our(my)selves into?

Ben came over today, too.  He's a big Akbash/Turkish Anatolian Shepherd/Great Pyrenees mix.  It's been a while since I've seen him, and he's HUGE, even though he's a bit over a year old (I think).  Although he's bred as a flock guardian, he's also kind of a big doofus.  He likes to lean against people and enjoys having his hips rubbed.  He's currently in dire need of a bath and a good brushing.

Unfortunately, he's also barking like hell a lot tonight.  Every time Greg or I went to go see him, he'd be fine, nothing there.  Ben's gone off several times this evening and I keep going outside to shush him, but it's late and I'm tired.  Hopefully, he'll calm down soon.

They say that once a dog gets a taste for chicken blood, it will forever go after chickens.  I wonder if the same is true for rabbits.

Yesterday morning, sleeping in after a night of insomnia, Greg woke me to tell me that another one of Nefertari's babies had died.  She'd been nibbling on its ears, too, but it was out of the nest box and around the corner.  It was the only black one she'd birthed, although Hatasu has a black one as well.  We were concerned about the gray one with tan, so we transferred it over to Hatasu's cage to foster.

And now, after stories of yet more dead bunnies, here's your unicorn chaser:  four wee little bunnies on day seven, all curled around each other. :)  A couple of them are hard to see, but they're all there!

Saturday afternoon, as Greg and I were getting ready to head to our neighbor's 3-year-old's birthday party, we checked on the baby rabbits.  I discovered, much to our dismay, that one of Nefertari's babies had gotten a hind leg tangled in some loose threads.  We gently cut everything away, but it was apparent that the baby had broken its leg and was going to lose its foot.  We decided to put the baby back in with Nefertari and see how things went.  It was a bit smaller than the others (who have been growing by leaps and bounds!), so it was likely it hadn't been able to nurse, either.

*sigh*

Well, Nefertari took care of the whole ordeal by eating the lame baby.  We came out to check the next day, and the infant had vanished completely.  No sign it had ever been there.  It was a bit distressing, but I appreciate that Mother Nature took care of it all.  Next time we know--no loose-threaded rags.

On the bright side, we have pictures!  Prepare to die of cute!  These are pictures from yesterday, meaning that they are five days old in the shots.

This one is an odd color--gray with tan.  Thutmose, the father, is white with black spots.  Nefertari, the mother (and Thutmose's daughter), is white with tan spots.  It's a gorgeous pelt color, so we'll keep this one around for a while.

This one is a more standard color.  You can see the black eyeliner, dark ears, and even a wee couple of spots along the spine.

Thutmose got his nails clipped yesterday (for the first time), which he didn't care for too much.  I tried to wrap him in a sweatshirt and put him on his back, but he didn't like that idea at all--even nipped me a couple of times.  Luckily, I was wearing leather gloves.  He did just fine when I kept him upright, so that'll be how we do them in the future.

However!  We had to trim his nails because we put him into a new, larger hutch and I was afraid we might not be able to get him once we put him in there.  He'll stay in there for the time being, but once the babies are older we'll shift Hatasu, Nefertari, and their brood into the big hutch so they all have more room.  It's a double-decker and quite palatial; we got it second-hand from some friends (the husband is allergic to rabbits, so they'd never have any), but had to re-hang the side door before we could use it.

THAT took all damn day.  Okay, maybe three hours, but it was the second time we'd gone at it.  Fortunately, Ben (our sharecropper) arrived on Saturday, so he was able to give us a hand.  Seems we really needed three pairs of hands to do it after all.

We did quite a lot of other stuff around the farm, too:  trimmed back the goat-bent fencing, added in a new section, and extended the top with chicken wire.  Again, three pairs of hands really made this a lot easier; I couldn't believe how much easier it was than when Greg and I did it alone last year.  Ben transferred a bunch of seedlings into the garden--mostly tomatoes and peppers--while Greg made wire cages for them.  I had plans to finish with the fencing, but my Ryobi battery ran out, so instead I wrangled up a mostly-completed hay manger out of wire fencing, a used tired, and baling twine.  We ended the day with a few beers (cider for me!) around the bonfire.

Today, of course, it's snowing. *sigh*

We're not sure if the mother (Hatasu) caught when we originally bred the rabbits, but the baby (Nefertari) is due any day now.  She's made a nest of cardboard scraps and fur, and when Greg brought down some strips of rags, she practically grabbed them from him to add to her nest.  It's yucky and wet outside, but they're under shelter and each have a nesting box.

As for timelines . . . When we got home from Denver last week, the mesh between the two halves of the cage had been knocked askew and all the rabbits were running around together.  The male, Thutmose, kept chasing Hatasu around and humping her, so if she wasn't bred before, she's bred now!

EDIT:  WE HAVE BABY BUNNIES!  Nefertari had three (Greg saw them <i>right</i> after they were born) and Hatasu, from what I could tell, had five.  Greg is bursting at the seams with pride and excitement, and we have champagne chilling in the freezer. :)

EDIT:  Hard to tell how many each has, but it looks like Nefertari had four and Hatasu had six or seven.  Sooooooo cute!  Each of them has a full-black baby, they all have wee little rings around their eyes, and at least one has the full speckled stripe down its back.  We attempted pictures, but the flash whitened everything and panicked the new mamas.

Productive day today.  I tilled the garden, including burying shrimp shells and stripped bones left over from stock.  Watching the ground steam was a trip and a half.  Dumped ashes on top.  Greg mucked out the shed and reloaded it.  Even with two applications of sunscreen and a hat, my face still wound up red.

We rearranged the rabbit hutches and I nailed backing onto them (feed bags and a vinyl-backed tablecloth) to keep the rabbit urine from eating into, oh, the side of the house.  Scooped up all the rabbit poo from under the hutch and pitched it into the compost.  Discovered 3-4 baby wasps' nests in the new hutch; promptly cleaned those out.  Moved the butchering station to the back of the house near the hose outlet.

Discovered that the old turkey pen had become OMG Lord of the Flies. o.O  Seriously.  That shit was gnarly as all hell.  Decided that we need to get out the flamethrower and bake the fuckers out.  That will have to wait for another day, though.  In airing out the turkey coops (which, sadly, had not been cleaned since their last inhabitants), I discovered . . . a bucket of feathers, guts, and blood.  From Thanksgiving, when the last three turkeys met their match.  *sigh*  I remember telling Uncle Mark to just chuck the bucket into the coop and we'd deal with it later.  Y'know, after it froze.  Well, it froze.  And then unfroze.  I have no idea how much of the fly issue is due to rancid turkey entrails and how much is due to rancid turkey excrement. *hangs head*  I did give the contents of the blood bucket a good burial and rinsing, though.

Since we started up the fire pit with the first bonfire of the season, we decided to invite several people over for dinner.  About half bailed, meaning that we wound up with the boys:  Pete, Kevin, and Casey.  The latter two had been trimming horse hooves all day and Casey had been checking on whether or not two of his mares had caught.  One of his gloves broke during the process.

For what it's worth, you do not test a mare's fertility by going in vaginally.  Nope, it's back-door rectal lovin' all the way, baby!  Casey brings up this topic of conversation as we're sitting around the bonfire at dinner, then proceeds to smell his hand.  There was also a significant amount of gas passed, and I was the recipient of some serious reverb. *facepalm*

But hey!  This wasn't just dinner--it was dinner and a SHOW.  Utilizing the bed of Kevin and Casey's pickup, we chucked the rabbits in the back and watched 'em fuck.  Errr . . . "breed," that is.  Casey had mentioned earlier that in his 4-H childhood he had bred rabbits; without knowing the ins and outs (so to speak) of reproduction, he noted that rabbits breeding smelled like French toast.

Yeah, I know.

There were plenty of jokes made about French toast, getting pregnant from sex in the back seat, and much cheering on of the rabbits.  The male (Thutmose) is perhaps a bit dense, as he kept aiming for Hatasu's head, or side, or back, or anywhere that wouldn't do any good.  He did successfully nail his daughter, the younger rabbit, two or three times.

Finally, at the end of the rabbit lovin', Thutmose curled up next to Hatasu and flopped down. (There were jokes made there, too, but Pete did point out that the rabbit had come something like seven times in the last twelve minutes, so we gave him a break.)  I climbed into the back of the truck to fetch out the rabbits and wound up with a damp wrist for my troubles.  Casey sniffed it in order to discern whether or not it truly smelled of French toast. (The answer, for those of you breathlessly awaiting, was No.)

We rounded out the night back in front of the bonfire again.  Greg tossed a few remnants of snow on top to tamp it out, and we all went our separate ways.  I sent leftovers home with Kevin and Casey, gave Pete's greyhound a farewell ear-tousle, and cleaned up from dinner.

A good beginning to spring, methinks. :)