When you go to the store you see lots of meat from cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. You never see rabbit meat though, and rabbit is actually better for you than all of the other four. I know some people may think it’s weird or cruel, but in reality it’s just like eating stake and chicken wings. Except rabbit meat is better for you. Compared to, cow, pig, chicken, and turkey rabbit has the most protein and the least amount of fat. If I haven’t convinced you already rabbit also has several vitamins including E and B12. My family is considering raising meat rabbits next year which is why I decided to write this post. This is a really short post but I don’t need to say anything else. This was simply to inform you about rabbit meat.
Month: July 2021
Farm Update: July 2021
Hello again, I have decided to start posting two times a week. So from now on I will be posting on Mondays and Thursdays. This Monday I am going to give you all an update.
I have been updating you on different animals and insects but today I will be talking about everything that has happened. I am going to start with the garden, if you have read some of our other posts you will know that we have six raised beds. In these beds we have planted, tomatoes, radishes, beans, cucumbers, and other things. Several of those things are growing well and almost ready for harvest. We have already picked most of the radishes and have also got some garlic that we planted next to the potato patch. Which leads me to the next thing, potatoes. I will ask my dad how he made the patch itself but we have six rows of potatoes. Each row is marked with stick that I wood burned the “potato” on. There are four potato plants growing and those four are doing well. I will update you again at harvest time to tell you what we got from our garden. We also have a small apple tree that has a bunch of apples on it. In past years we have had little apples on it but this year there are some bigger ones two.
Now I will move on to the animals. There isn’t much to say about them, the goats are doing well and so are the chickens. The ducklings are getting bigger and switching moms. We aren’t sure why but MC’s child has joined Splash and rarely visits his mother. All the ducks normally follow around Splash now but sometimes we will spot them with MC. In my post ( Click here to read) about ducks I mentioned the duck house and how all the ducks got out of it. We did catch them all again besides the two mothers of course, but they managed to get out again. My dad found a hole where the tarp and deer netting met and he fixed it. We still need to catch them again and we will soon but it is actually pretty difficult.
Now I will move onto some birds who haven’t escaped, the chickens. In my post ( Click here to read) about chickens I talked about some new ones we got. They were only a week or two old at that point. Now they are much older and nearing the stage when they will start laying eggs. I will tell you when they do start laying.
There is one other thing that is not about the animals or plants, this year my mom has decided to home school us. I will share about our curriculum later when we have everything figured out. That is all I had to share about today, and I will be posting another post on Thursday this week.
The Bee Crisis
You’ve probably heard by now, bees are dying. We recently got bees at my house, if you would like to read more about that I have another post about them. There are over 20,000 species of bees, 4,000 of them are native to the United States. Today I’m going to talk about why they’re dying and why it’s important that they don’t. I also will address how you can help.
Why are bees dying?
There are many reasons bees. One of them is fire. In some places we are intentionally burning areas of land to get rid of growing plants so we can plant new plants. This has many benefits but it can also destroy bee hives. Pesticides used on farmland also kill bees. Because of global warming bees are dying from high heat as well. There are many more things that kill bees, but I could only talk about a few.
Why are bees important?
The answer to this question is simple, they pollinate our food. As you most likely know the earth contains several intertwined ecosystems. When one part of an ecosystem is endangered or extinct it throws off the whole system. The same is true for bees. Bees are the main pollinators in the United States. If they go extinct our food will not grow as it would if there were still bees. If there were no bees more of earths population would go hungry.
How can you help?
The most obvious answer to this question is plants. Certain flowers are really good for bees, and can help them get the pollen and nectar they need to survive. Some of the best flowers for bees are bee balm, echinacea, black eyed susan, and even dandelions. I have a whole other post about how great dandelions are. One other really important thing you can do is learn more abut bees and what they need, and then share it with others. If you really want to protect the bees you can start your own garden. This will help because then you won’t be using pesticides that are used to grow vegetables form the grocery store.
Why dandelions aren’t so bad..
Where I live there are a lot of dandelions. In the summer some people’s lawns look more yellow than green. My mom and I have arguments over if these yellow flowers are good or bad. Like my mom many people find these flowers annoying, and while they are a weed they’re actually really good for you and your lawn. Dandelions are very nutritious, and almost every part of the dandelion is edible. The only part you would want to avoid is the flower stem, This contains latex. They have a lot of vitamin K, vitamin A, and vitamin C. They also have folate, potassium, and calcium. There may be some side effects to eating dandelions so I strongly encourage you to do your own research. You may have too many dandelions to consume though and that’s fine, because these actually help your lawn in several ways. The roots spread out a lot which helps to prevent erosion and because they are perennials they don’t have to establish new root systems every year. They also release calcium into the soil for other plants to use. Calcium is essential for all plant but it really helps a lot of plants you would find in a garden. Then again there seeds spread fast and they will come back year after year, so you may not want them.
Ducks
Ducks are in the family Anatidae along with geese and swans. There are several types of ducks the rarest being the Madagascan pochards. There are a lot of more common ducks too. We have one Khaki Cambell duck and a few Muscovy ducks, plus one that we aren’t sure of what type it is. One of our Muscovy ducks was sitting on a nest of eggs and 4 of them ended up hatching. 3 of the died right a way. We aren’t really sure why, but it might be because they hatched in a week where we were having exceptionally hot weather. One of them lived for about a week before dying unexpectedly too. One of our other ducks laid eggs under our deck and 9 of those eggs have hatched. We yet have another duck that is sitting on a nest.Her eggs have not hatched yet, but we think they will hatch within the next one to two weeks. Earlier this year me an my dad built a duck house out of PVC pipe and deer netting. When we first built it the deer netting was getting caught a then ripping because of weeds. So we wrapped steel mesh around the bottom of the house. We captured all the ducks and put them in the new duck house. One of the ducks escaped because she apparently had a nest and needed to get back to it. We let her stay out and then a week later my dad was gone getting bees. Since my dad and mom were gone my grandma came to stay with us. That week it was really windy, and while my grandma was watching us the duck house blew in the air. The duck house was fine, it only blew a few feet but all the ducks escaped. They are still out but soon we will get them back in the duck house now that it is staked down. That is all I’m going to write today but I will keep you updated if the other eggs hatch.
We got bees!
About six weeks ago my dad got two nucs. A nuc is generally four frames that are already established. We could have 
also got a package but then they would take about two weeks to draw out comb and even start producing honey. In a nuc all the bees are related to the queen where as in a package they are not. Anyway the hives are doing really well and today when we did a hive inspection we put the honey super on at least one of the hives. A honey super is a box that you set on the top of the other boxes that the bees will put honey in. They can’t become brood frames because the queen can’t get in these frames so therefore she cannot lay eggs. One of our hives, hive 1, is doing really well it has two boxes that are full of honey, pollen, and eggs. 
There are 15 frames in this hive and we didn’t need to feed them when we checked on them today. The other hive, hive 2, is bigger with 19 frames in it. They are doing pretty well two but the whole top box is still empty, except for a little bit of comb they have just started to draw out. I am not sure if this one has a honey super on it or not. earlier I mentioned feeding the bees. We use sugar syrup with a 1 to 1 ratio of water to sugar. Overall I think the hives are doing really well and I’m excited to continue with this project.