AmberLops
Herd Master
Ha ha furry burgers with ears and allWell it ain't like they were wrapped in fur!
JHP Homestead’s Journal
- Thread starter JHP Homestead
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #32
JHP Homestead
Loving the herd life
After letting the sausage meat cure for a couple days, we stuffed the sausages into casings yesterday. I didn’t realize that we were almost out of the large casings, so we had to put most of it in the breakfast link casings. Whoops. I meant to get them smoked today but didn’t get to it early enough in the day, so that’s now moved to tomorrow.
Sausage!
I also got the last of the strawberries picked. Got another 8 pounds, which puts us at 51 pounds for the season. That’s more than double we got last year, so our patch is growing despite being overrun with weeds. I’m planning on weeding and mulching it this fall, and moving a bunch of the runners so we actually have rows again. This year it was just a huge block of strawberries with tons of weeds, so they were not fun to pick.
In animal news, I bred a few rabbits today. 2 does lifted good but the third refused and just ran the buck around. It’s all of a sudden hot here and he’s a big boy so he got tired of that quick.
She’s a doe I thought we were going to lose of coccidiosis a couple weeks ago though, so I might hold her off another week or two, in case she isn’t fully recovered and that’s why she didn’t want to breed. That means she won’t have a breeding partner for fostering, but she usually has smaller litters though, so it should be ok.
Sausage!
I also got the last of the strawberries picked. Got another 8 pounds, which puts us at 51 pounds for the season. That’s more than double we got last year, so our patch is growing despite being overrun with weeds. I’m planning on weeding and mulching it this fall, and moving a bunch of the runners so we actually have rows again. This year it was just a huge block of strawberries with tons of weeds, so they were not fun to pick.
In animal news, I bred a few rabbits today. 2 does lifted good but the third refused and just ran the buck around. It’s all of a sudden hot here and he’s a big boy so he got tired of that quick.
She’s a doe I thought we were going to lose of coccidiosis a couple weeks ago though, so I might hold her off another week or two, in case she isn’t fully recovered and that’s why she didn’t want to breed. That means she won’t have a breeding partner for fostering, but she usually has smaller litters though, so it should be ok.
AmberLops
Herd Master
Yummy!!
And i'm glad you'll have 2 litters of rabbits. It's always nice when they actually want to breed ha ha!
And i'm glad you'll have 2 litters of rabbits. It's always nice when they actually want to breed ha ha!
- Thread starter
- #34
JHP Homestead
Loving the herd life
You got that right. I couldn’t get them bred for anything last winter. We finally strung some lights up to give them more “daylight” hours and that seemed to work.
AmberLops
Herd Master
That's great!
Sometimes they can just be impossible...'breed like rabbits' my foot
Baymule
Herd Master
That sausage looks good! Do you use hog casing?
- Thread starter
- #37
JHP Homestead
Loving the herd life
The bigger ones are hog casing. I’m not positive, but I think the smaller ones might be sheep. We bought them a few years ago and don’t have the original package.
- Thread starter
- #38
JHP Homestead
Loving the herd life
I have some chicks hatched! Two of our silkie chickens have been broody all spring. The first batch of eggs we set under them got kicked out of the nest and broken for various reasons, but we reset them with more eggs and now we have chicks! There’s at least 3 under the one silkie.
I usually do a couple batches in the incubator but with having a baby this spring, I didn’t feel like getting the incubators out. Figured we’d let the chickens do the work this year instead.
DH and I did a bunch of brush hogging, mowing, and weed whipping this weekend. Also cleaned out the rabbit shed and set the raccoon traps out. They’ve started getting into the rabbit area and chicken run, so it’s time to cut down on the raccoon numbers again.
DH also got the piglets castrated. It was his first time doing that but I think it went well. Luckily we only had 3 boars/barrows so it wasn’t bad.
This evening we got to try out our new fishing boat. My 3yo DS has been wanting to fish all year and DH happened to find a cheap boat for sale. We had to order a life jacket for DD, local sporting goods store doesn’t carry life jackets for infants. It arrived today though (Amazon delivers on Sundays now, weird) and we got to go out on the water. We went bluegill fishing and probably caught half a dozen in half an hour, which made it pretty fun for DS. Afterwards, pizza for dinner rounded out a pretty awesome weekend.
I usually do a couple batches in the incubator but with having a baby this spring, I didn’t feel like getting the incubators out. Figured we’d let the chickens do the work this year instead.
DH and I did a bunch of brush hogging, mowing, and weed whipping this weekend. Also cleaned out the rabbit shed and set the raccoon traps out. They’ve started getting into the rabbit area and chicken run, so it’s time to cut down on the raccoon numbers again.
DH also got the piglets castrated. It was his first time doing that but I think it went well. Luckily we only had 3 boars/barrows so it wasn’t bad.
This evening we got to try out our new fishing boat. My 3yo DS has been wanting to fish all year and DH happened to find a cheap boat for sale. We had to order a life jacket for DD, local sporting goods store doesn’t carry life jackets for infants. It arrived today though (Amazon delivers on Sundays now, weird) and we got to go out on the water. We went bluegill fishing and probably caught half a dozen in half an hour, which made it pretty fun for DS. Afterwards, pizza for dinner rounded out a pretty awesome weekend.
Baymule
Herd Master
Your family will have a lot of fun with that boat. At one point in my life, I lived close to the coast and went fishing a lot in the marshy areas. Fresh fish has a lot going for it, fish frys with family are the best!
Baymule
Herd Master
I've always used the hog casings, pretty sure the smaller casings are sheep. Nothing like smoked sausage!
