Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sad news (and the reason why it is so easy to kill bunnies and eat them)

I'm sad to report that Ruby had her bunnies and let them all die (and gnawed around on one of them).  It didn't look like she made any attempt to keep them warm and they died of exposure.  When people ask me how I can just kill a bunny that is so cute and just skin it and eat it, this is the reason why it is so easy (plus, we have the white ones with the red eyes, so they are kind of creepy looking to start with--anyone ever read the book Bunicula?).  If a mommy bunny is willing to let all her bunnies die of exposure, you are just reminded that they are food, not real smart and (gasp!  we'll see if I have any PETA folks reading my blog) probably don't have any emotions...or at least very primitive ones.  The good Lord gave us rabbits to be food, either for us or some other creature.

I was thinking about the situation with Ruby and her bunnies today while I was sitting on the porch swing, enjoying the beautiful day.  Female rabbits don't have a whole lot of control over whether or not to let a male mate with them.  Actually, two bunnies...getting it on...is pretty funny to watch.  The male kind of chases her until she gets worn out and he jumps on her, does his thing (like a cute furry jack hammer), he falls over and then they are done.  The say she gets of whether or not she wants to be a mother is in taking care of the babies.  She can let them die, or eat them, or she can take care of them and help them grow.  I imagine that is a quirk of the evolutionary process.  The mother is the one that has to do all the work, so don't let her decide whether or not to propagate the species until she gets a good look at all those cute little faces.  Although, remember, I seriously doubt rabbits have much in the way of emotions.  We are going to give Ruby one more chance at having a litter before she makes her way to the pressure cooker.  

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Ruby is nesting!!!!

I'm happy to report that one of our doe rabbits, Ruby is nesting!  Joe bred her a few weeks ago and she is beginning to pull her fur out and make a nest for her babies!  In a week or two, we should have a new batch of baby bunnies.

Rabbits were the first animals we tried to raise for food and so far, it has been fairly successful.  We have one buck, Max and two does, Ruby and Rapunzel.  Last year we got a few litters of rabbits and we have learned a lot about raising bunnies, butchering bunnies, cooking bunnies and how to get bunnies to mate (which is hilarious to watch, by the way...I'm sure there is a youtube video somewhere where you can watch).  I have been freezing their hides so we can tan them and make things with them (if I get enough, I can make a rabbit fur blanket!).  We had to take a break breeding them over the winter since we couldn't heat the area where the rabbits were (they are outside, but out of the wind) and now that spring is springing, it is time to start mating them again.

We have experimented a number of ways to cook rabbit and I think I have found my favorite way...Rabbit Noodle Soup.  Take a skinned and cleaned rabbit (no head or paws, but ribs and belly meat in tact) and put it in a pressure cooker.  Add chicken broth, wine, beer, canned tomatoes, raw carrrots, celery, onions and garlic to the amount you want for soup.  Put the lid on the pressure cooker and cook at 15 lbs of pressure for 15 minutes and let cool naturally.  Once cool, take out the rabbit and pull all the meat from the bones.  With the juice left in the pressure cooker, run an immersion blender through it to blend up any of the solids left from the vegetables.  Then pour the liquid into a soup pot and add the chopped up rabbit meat and frozen vegetables to taste (we like a lot of vegetables).  Once the vegetables are hot, then add egg noodles to taste (we like a lot of egg noodles) and cook until noodles are soft.  I didn't need to add much seasoning because I used homemade chicken stock and it was seasoned pretty heavily, but I did add some all spice and some basil.

One other good recipe we made with rabbit was rabbit pizza.  Take pizza dough and make a crust.  Use barbeque sauce instead of tomato sauce.  Chop up cooked rabbit meat into bite size pieces and put on pizza.  I also added some chopped onion to the pizza.  Then top with mozzarella cheese and bake in a 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.  It came out like the barbeque chicken pizzas from pizza places but better.  It was excellent.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Sickness is not very Homesteadery.....(followed by chickens)

Well....the not shopping for six weeks thing is going pretty good, but other homesteader pursuits have been put on the back burner.  My family, sans me (Praise the Lord!!!), has had a really bad cough since just after Christmas.  Last week I took my daughter to the doctor because I noticed she wasn't hearing me and since then we've spent our time in doctor's offices getting hearing tests, chest x-rays and nose swab cultures and sitting in the pharmacy getting inhalers and antibiotics and little plastic face masks with tubes on them that cost $48 (I think if I would have had time, I could have made one myself and it would have been a great homesteader project).  Anywho...she's getting better and my mind is back on my homesteader pursuits.

Back during the first week of February, I started selling eggs and delivering them to people I know who wanted to be put on an egg route.  I am happy to say that my demand now is greater than what our chickens are producing and it is time for me to start shopping for some baby chicks.  When we first decided to get chickens, we inherited some from my husband's cousin who had lived in the country and was moving back to the city and also some from the older man who lives in front of us who was tired of taking care of his chickens.  They all were fairly old, but we were getting a fair amount of eggs from them.  After butchering some of the non-layers (I found a great method for making chicken stock and getting meat from the chickens at the same time and canning everything!!!  I'll share it another time) and having a few get eaten by chicken hawks and a dog (nothin' yer can do wit a chicken eat'n dog sep shoot um'---or keep them in your barn until you find someone who'll take him), we were down to 10 or so chickens and decided to buy chicks.  We learned alot from raising the chicks and out of 25, only 13 survived.  Turns out that dogs, weasels and hawks really like chicken.

As of right now, we have about seven of the origional chickens and thirteen new ones.  We have one old rooster (his name is Cletus) and one new rooster (his name is Firebird).  The old ones were mixed breed, but mostly brown layers and the new ones are all araucanas, the kind that lay the colored eggs.  

Since my egg demand now outweighs the supply and it is time to buy new chickens, I've been looking at the chicken catalogues trying to find what breed I want to buy.  Honestly, I would love a mix.  That is one thing I like about the araucanas, they all look different.  The problem is they are cheaper to buy in quantity and the smallest quantity is usually around 25.  My husband doesn't want to get arucanas again and thinks he wants a good laying breed.  I like the colored eggs, but if we aren't getting araucanas, then I want to get brown layers.  I know...they don't taste any different from white eggs, but I do like the aesthetics of brown and colored eggs and I just enjoy cooking with them more.  I associate white eggs with those thin, watery, tasteless eggs that are on sale for 89 cents every week at the grocery. It's weird, but when I see all those white perfectly shaped eggs that come in the carton from the grocery, I forget that they came from something living.  It is almost like they come from an egg factory somewhere.  I guess they would kind of have to in order to get that many perfectly uniform eggs.  I'm really not one of those animal right's hippies, but the whole chicken farming thing is a little creepy--and I don't think the results are culinarily worth it.  I don't know why more people don't have a few chickens in their yard and get their eggs that way.  As long as the zoning doesn't prohibit it, it is pretty easy.  But I digress....

So my husband is looking at buying red star sex linked chicks.  I would prefer Rhode Island Reds.  My husband also is entertaining the idea of getting some meat birds, like Jumbo Cornish X Rocks.  Those chickens creep me out a little because they have been genetically bread to have the huge breasts (okay...any guys reading my blog can quit giggling now...) and they look like mutants.  You have to butcher them at 10 weeks or else they get so big their legs can't support them anymore!

By the way, I realized that I can upload pictures to my blog.  For those of you who read it on a regular basis...you are the coolest people in the whole world...but you might want to check back on previous blogs in the future to see if I uploaded pictures for them.  It may take me a week or so with our super slow satellite internet!!!!!