While we are on the subject...

We have raised our own meat, milk, eggs, vegetables and fruits. We even raise our own kids! Ok that was off topic. Frank has wanted to try meat rabbits for years, we just had too much going on. This is the first duty station that he may really be home quite a bit, thus he has already started gardening and working on his aqua-ponics. If we are going to add in more fruits and veggies, we have to grow more of it. Food is expensive everywhere, and I want to know how my food is raised. Rabbit meat is a healthy alternative to other meats, and we will be raising and feeding them ourselves. This guy is a flemish giant buck. He weighs 19 lbs.


This girl is 75% flemish giant and 25% satin, the bit of satin the breeding is supposed to make more meaty/less bone dense. She weighs 14 lbs. The lady who sold them to us raises chickens, pheasant, rabbits and goats for meat, milk and eggs. She has been doing it for 30+ years, she says the rabbit meat is lean and mostly white meat because they are domestic. It is darker if you let them out a lot to hop and free range. We will be building a roving coop for them and they will go outside quite a bit in spring/summer/fall months because we feel it is better for them than being in a cage all the time.


Just as we did with goats and chickens, we will butcher them ourselves so we know they will have a cruel free life and death. I do not like the way animals are raised for meat in this country, I find it rather sad. However, we do not think being vegetarians is the answer, so we prefer to raise our own. We are trying to get a barn built (3 ft of snow makes that hard) and until then these guys will live in the garage. We will build a hutch tonight/tomorrow and hopefully get a roving coop built for chickens as well. We want to buy several laying hens. We cannot buy cows/goats until we have a barn, they cant live in the garage along with the rabbits and chickens! We are trying to have farm raised foods as quickly as possible for cost and health.

Our greenhouse reaches 115 degrees if we do not have the fan kick on, that is when it is 30 degrees out. That is good news, but at night the temperature drops dramatically. We have to find a way to heat it efficiently in order to have year around foods, but hopefully we can at least have a summer garden this year.

Thats all for now, off to school my kids.