So, anyway....

Yeah.  It's been a while.  My new job got me busy and a lot of things got away from me.  I'm not selling at the market store anymore.  I've decided to step back from some of the plans I had in order to make good on some promises I made to myself.  Chief among those was to simplify my life.

Simplify?  Oh how naive can a grown woman be?  In this day and age, simplifying is just not possible.

I'm not producing for sale on purpose anymore.  But, I am still working towards subsistence, self-sufficiency, and sustainability for my own home and life.  We have quite a pantry going.  The rabbits are adorable and productive.  We are planning a coop of hens for eggs next year.

Oh...speaking of rabbits, in June we bred Jane Doe.  She had a litter of seven.  These are the two that survived to leave the nest box:

Right out of the nest box.

Also right out of the nest box.

They were the cutest things ever!  They grew up fast and were due to be sent to freezer camp in September.  But, things got a little hairy.  (hee!)

I have long been of the belief that solid application of my personal animal husbandry motto, "First they are cute; then they are tasty", was absolutely required in all instances of meat rabbit breeding.  Face it: all animals are born cute so their own parents don't kill them.  They are cute just long enough to get old enough to take care of themselves.

WAY too cute to eat just yet.

Very close to the 12 week window and a very proper tasty size of five pounds and no longer nearly as cute.

So you can see for yourself that rabbits follow the cute-then-tasty plan as expected.  But, for me, they re-enter the cute stage at a certain point.  That stage starts, apparently, sometime near 20 weeks of age.

Guess how old those little bunnies are right now? 

Yep. *sigh*

We went out there with murderous intention.  We wanted rabbit in the freezer and we were bound to have it!  Except the young'uns out there have taken on the cuteness that their parents had when we first got them and brought them home.  The white one in particular has captured my heart.  We have been unable to bring ourselves to do the deed.  We waited too long.

Now it's too late.  Far too late.  So late, in fact, that they now have names.  The deed is undone.  We are attached.

Meet Grace and Janet.  Grace is the white rabbit (get it?  Grace Slick...White Rabbit...har) and Janet is the black rabbit (she has the one white foot sorta like Michael Jackson's one white glove, except she's a girl, so Janet).

Janet?  With one blue named Janis and the other named Jane, naming another doe 'Janet' isn't confusing AT ALL

Utter lunacy.