Notable Quotes

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author Unknown

Rabbit Nestboxes

I built four nestboxes like this so cage floor space wouldn't be taken over by a nestbox. I have one box that's your standard one that is set inside the cage.

You actually line the mesh floor with cardboard. The purpose of the mesh is pee drainage.  And then you put straw in on top of the cardboard for bedding.

The harder aspect is having successful kindling... so far we're 1 for 3. Yuck.

Pasture Improvement

I come from Montana. Up there hay rings don't seem to be used much. I could be wrong but I really didn't ever see any. What I would see are hay bunks in a feedlot or the bale rolled out on the pasture.

PROBLEMS WITH HAYRINGS

First, a hayring gives you a ten foot radius circle of concentrated manure, pee and hay wastage. A very concentrated circle. This is relatively okay so long you move the ring each time you put in a new bale.. which brings me to the next problem. Most only seem to move the rings seasonally and sometimes never. Don't be lazy! Make that in place fertilization count! Cost is the third problem. They cost money to buy. Some times prohibitively so. If not heavily built, they will get busted up and bent and you'll have to eventually replace it. More money. Finally, they can be problematic for horned livestock. Which I have and have fairly long horns to boot.

PROBLEMS WITH ROLLING OUT BALES

While this spreads the manure over a much larger area, it really only works well with a herd size that can eat that much in a day. But even then, there tends to be excess hay wastage.

MODIFIED BALE ROLL OUT

So this is what we do. The bale is rolled out over the area we want to fertilize, this is generally progressive and after several bales can cover a large area, and a "break" wire (electrified) cuts the cattle off what we don't want them to waste. They will eat the hay from underneath the wire but in general we'll give a foot or two hay strip.

This method still has problems. If it snows heavy your unused hay gets covered up. If it's not too bad you can dig the edge out a little and the cows usually take it from there. Sometimes the cows get out and make a mess of the future hay. This irritates me the most.

CONCLUSIONS

Though all these methods have their problems, if managed well you can put carbon and manure down nicely in a manner that improves your pastures. The picture below is of the modified bale roll out. We have a hay ring with our beef herd as they like to break the fence a little too much. So we move the ring every time we feed them hay.

Blogger App Issues

While the apparently is nice and all it has some whopper issues.. I have to highlight text to link but I can't get it to highlight the just the text I want then scroll up to select link. The text manipulation has to be thought of ahead of time for the same reason. Inline pictures are a no go, all go to the end. And finally it won't let me use HTML tags to do the manipulations myself. Google you've got some work to do! My software engineer husband is less than impressed and so am I.

Tapping Trees for Syrup

I live in Kansas ... the last thing I ever thought I'd be doing is tapping trees to make syrup! Notice! I did NOT say MAPLE syrup. Nope, I'm tapping Black Walnuts of all the crazy things. I have lots of walnut trees, granted a lot of the big ones were sold for lumber right before we bought the place. Upwards of $8000-10000 worth of large trees taken. I can understand though... the guy was trying to pay doctor bills.

There are some maples down here and people do tap them but you just don't get the sap flows like you do up north. Kind of comes in fits and spurts. But I happily have some friends who've been doing a little sugaring the last few years so I at least had someone to ask basic questions. The taps I made are based on what he did. Super cheap! I use a 6" length of 1/2" PEX. I added the screw to hang a bucket from, he stuck a 1 gallon milk jug over it with just an X cut in it to slip over the tap end. The jug is oriented upside down so you just unscrew or pop the cap to empty it. I don't have milk jugs in abundance ..  I don't buy milk. I did have a bunch of ice cream buckets I was given recently and also discovered grocery store bakeries are a source for free to cheap buckets 2 gallon and up. So I used what I had. I even had the PEX and screws amazingly enough. But mathwise, PEX is about $0.25 per foot so 2 taps plus a couple screws and a little tape (seals the tap in the hole better; use duct tape or first aid tape) you're looking at probably $0.20 per tap.

I used a carpenter awl to drill the holes with an appropriately sized bit. Takes a little muscle but you drill approximately a 2" deep hole, clean the debris out, use a hammer to tap the tap in and hang your container on it. Violá! You're collecting sap!

Now, there is a minimum tree diameter you can tap. Tap nothing less than a 10" diameter (31" circumference at chest height). Bigger trees can handle more taps. At a 20" diameter (64" circumference) a tree can handle two taps; at 25"+ (79"+), three.

Something I learned, because I don't have a book, is to tap the anything but the north side of the tree; south and east being the best.
After collecting enough sap, 50-60 gallons will produce approximately 1 gallon of syrup, you boil and boil and boil in a flat pan with no more than a sustained 2" of liquid in the pan. Do this outside over a fire or propane camp stove (the stove, however, is not economical for the amount you need to burn). Why outside? Too much humidity in the house even burning a wood stove. Learned that one too. There's more information on the web about the boiling aspect than the tapping so I'm not going to get detailed about it here.

So far I've made around 1 gallon of syrup. My first attempt at the sugaring aspect ... I nearly had sugar! Too far! The flavor is dark and nutty but nice and sweet. Very different than maple syrup.

Where did I get the idea to tap walnuts? Plants for a Future at http://pfaf.org/user/Search_Use.aspx?glossary=Sap. (Sorry, the blogger app has issues.. otherwise I'd link it.)

365 Days of Photos: Day 14

A Very Useful Garden Addition ...

The idea of rabbits may not cross peoples minds as an extension to their garden. But the shear volume of manure just a dozen rabbits produce is absolutely insane! While I would love to pasture them, the logistics to do so is rather difficult. Meanwhile, I'll just have to settle for the caging system.

Whatever the case, rabbit manure has the ability to be directly applied to the garden. No composting required. Recommended? Probably a good idea all the same. The same goes for sheep and goat manure actually ...

Back in January we cleaned a pickup load of manure/alfalfa out of our rabbitry. It had collected in a pile off to the side from clean outs from under the cages. Now we've cleaned out more and have at least another third of a pickup load. It's pretty awesome! Otherwise, we have compost from the milking stanchion area that consists of hay/straw, cow manure and wood chips. I've got quite a bit of that to spread around as well.

So fertility wise, my garden looks promising this year.