Homesteading 101: How to Skin a Bunny

Hopefully this won’t come up in too many searches for people looking for step-by-step instructions, because that’s not what this is about, but maybe at a later time I’ll post a thorough guide to processing a rabbit. Instead, this is about the mess of a controversy I and my husband helped ignite by teaching a class by the same title as a part of the Tampa Free Skool. Following a request and a somewhat poor call on my part, pictures from the class ended up on the Facebook page and ignited some very inflammatory reactions from people – primarily those of vegan and vegetarian leanings.

I won’t hash out the entire mess of what happened in the 80 comments in the thread, because I feel like the most important point to articulate to everyone, of meat-eating habits and non-meat eating alike is the initial post that I put up:

“There was a comment this morning from someone I’m guessing left the group mentioning the ‘violent disregard for the life of other individuals’ in reference to the rabbit class. I suppose they won’t see this, but I wanted to comment that this course happened not because of a disregard for life, but rather because of a high and honorable regard for the sacredness and value of the lives of other living things, with a recognition that our life is not possible without the sacrificing of other lives, whether they be plant or animal. Just because a leafy green does not bleed when we pick and eat it does not mean that its contribution to our sustenance is any less valuable or worthwhile. I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of how the teachers of the class feel regarding the sacrifices and deaths that happen daily to feed us.”

10 people came to the class last Sunday where we walked them through how to butcher a rabbit as they were actually completing the process. Our youngest student was 9 years old, and she comes from a house where the rule is, “If you can’t kill the animal, you can’t eat it.” For them this doesn’t mean you kill all the animals, but if you cannot bring yourself to take the life of the animal you are going to eat, you shouldn’t be eating it – a respectful way of approaching the topic, in my opinion. We made sure to put up partitions so that the neighbors, people that drive by, and other random passersby would not be privy to what ended up being a rather bloody affair when 8 or 9 rabbits were processed by the end of the day.

Our freezer is quite full of frozen pelts and rabbit brains as we are planning on learning how to brain tan through the book Buckskin I got Nate. I’m sure this will be the next most controversial class, though maybe less so than the first rabbit class because the brains have already been removed and that is the most gruesome part.

The point of the class was to educate people about keeping ethical and healthy meat and appreciating the things that we eat – in this case the animals that are so often brutally mistreated and undervalued in the commercial livestock business, but provide so much that our bodies need. Feedback was positive from those that actually attended and we may even do the same class again for people that expressed interest but were unable to attend. I’ll be sure to leave all the pictures for here instead of on a Facebook forum next time since people are not very wild about real-life animal slaughters.

Honourable Honey

Naturally, people are apt to discredit much of the things they find listed on craigslist. I found the job I hold, and several previous ones on craigslist, however, so I’m a bit less skeptical of the site (and of most things in general, to be truthful) and what people post there. Sometime last week I saw a post for an outfit in South Tampa where raw milk (less than a day old from the cow, fresh cream on top), raw honey, and eggs were sold “on the honour system.”

I looked today to find out the name of the place, West Brother’s Farm. I can’t find any mention of much on the site except about the honey, but the craigslist ad went over their milk sales, eggs, and the honey stand.

They are located here:
6101 S. 2nd St.
Tampa, FL 33611

When Nate and I went Sunday afternoon a gentleman doing the weekend chores told us to feel free to poke around and look at the farm (which I wanted to do, but would have been too nervous or weirded out to go if nobody were there) and he directed us to the fridge where the milk was. He also told us to feel free to grab some greens from the vegetable garden if we bought milk or honey, as grazing is complimentary to customers.

Nate was thrilled to pick a mustard green leaf the size of a small kite and was maybe even more excited to see that they had beets and chard (his favorite things ever, apparently), though they weren’t ready for harvesting just yet.

I wandered pretty close to some bee hives that were toward the back of the easily accessible parts of the property and watched them in fascination. I have probably 10 books checked out from the library on bee keeping since that’s my next possible venture.

Our milk had listed the date it was milked from the cow, and what time of the day, which was the night before we picked it up. Now how’s that for fresh?! We ladled the cream off the top into a tupperware container and I intend to make butter with it when we use up the surplus we already have.

Obviously since the FDA has rules and stuff, this is for pet consumption only, but I worked in a dairy lab for a year and a half and as much as I loved the people I worked for an all that jazz, I’d trust this unpasteurized stuff from the cold fridge that came from the udder within 24 hours more than the milk we chugged off our production lines at the plant by a whole lot. Also, if you are sensitive to lactose (but not severely allergic) sometimes drinking raw milk like this can ease up or get rid of those troubles entirely. Nate doesn’t do so well with pasteurized milk, but there are enough good bacterias in this milk that, as he said, the milk digests itself!

Their prices are as follows:
$7 for gallon of milk (with 2 inches of cream at the top)
$7 for a pound of honey, $14 for 3 pounds, and $45 for 12 pounds
$5 per dozen eggs

If you don’t buy local and are gawking at these prices, I’ll just say that I firmly believe that getting my edibles a solid 10 or more steps closer to the source of the product is at least worth the investment because I can meet and speak to the person keeping those cows and chickens and bees.

Tampa Trash Rescue

I just put in an application for a microgrant of $1,000 with Awesome Tampa Bay for a project I called Tampa Trash Rescue.

Basically, Nate and I would like to trade out his car for a small truck. We would really love to start hauling organic waste from local supermarkets in addition to our few spots that provide us with compost already (Thanks Kaleisia and Starbucks!) and using that to create a mass of usable compost that will assist in making our yard a plot of food instead of sandy, weedy, grass.

The larger picture goal is that we grow enough to feed ourselves and then enough to have extra to donate to non profits that need produce, share with friends who are awesome (some of who need a meal more than others), and possibly sell some to end up with super awesome greens coming into the wallet as well as the garden.

Amendments

It really rocks when random people from the neighbor hood go by on bicycles or while walking and tell us that we are taking better care of this place than is has been taken care of in years. People seem impressed that renters even want to care for a property at all, but definitely to the extent in the yard, I suppose since we’ve been out their composting, planting, building, and amending the soil nearly every day for the last 3 months or so.

Nate made a small raised bed to transplant our wildly growing tomato plants in over near the grape vines. We had built a trellis to tie the tomatoes to, but hadn’t actually separated the plants from their random sprouting plots, so it was nice to do that. I planted some borage and swiss chard in with the tomatoes so they could keep each other company. Speaking of the grapes, I have a hard time telling if they’re actually growing, but I know it’s colder this time of year (cold-er, maybe cooler, but it’s hardly been cold but a few nights so far) and they’ve been well protected from the one freeze we got and well watered for sure. Maybe I just have to wait until summer to see any substantial growth.

The more I read, the more I decide that raised beds are really the only way to plant in this sandy junky Florida soil – maybe because raised beds don’t use the sandy crappy Florida soil and it gives the soil underneath some time to re-nutrify and we can focus on letting that soil sit and gain some organic matter slowly while actually growing some edibles in the beds we create. I like the idea of growing right out of the ground, but run-off is a reality and it’s also a reality that we really want our stuff to grow and not just get washed away. We also boxed in our mustard greens since they have been growing very nicely, but seemed a bit exposed at the root and we didn’t want their health to suffer because of that. We need them for ourselves and for the bunny, who seems to love them just as much as buckwheat.

Nate will probably do the first butchering on his own, but I think he should open up a future butchering session as a Free Skool class so anyone else interested in basic slaughter principles can learn. Any takers?

Bird Box Soup

1 cut ribeye steak, chopped

Water

Several huge leaves of collards (leaves cut off the stems)

Several huge leaves of mustard greens (stems cut off the bottoms)

Several beets (skins left on?! I was shocked Nate did this, but apparently I forgot when I ate the soup because it’s great and I didn’t remember until just now that he did), sliced

A bit of cilantro

2 Green bell peppers, chopped

Onion, chopped

Garlic, minced or crushed

Green onions, chopped

Salt and Pepper

 

Cook on medium heat for 35-ish minutes or so. Enjoy 🙂 It’s simply and definitely not a punch in the gut of flavor, but it’s delicious and healthy.

 

48 Hour Carpentry

Within a matter of 48 hours ago, I decided to acquire the free bunny offered up by a woman on Freecycle and then I had a deadline to build a hutch to house the creature. The woman had offered a male and female pair, but gave the male away to a school, so instead we got Rosemary, the lady. I named her that because I’m sure the first bunny Nate makes will be covered in Rosemary and they will only have food names since they are intended for food. I think I shall call the boy Tarragon.

 

The majority of the materials in assembling this hutch were either items from Freecycle, Craigslist’s free section, or dumpster dive-acquired. I did purchase the hinges, the chicken wire, and the paint (which was originally acquired for the duck coop). The A-frame was made with pallet wood (thanks for disassembling that, Jay!) and then shingled with old laminate floor boards that someone gave away on Craigslist a while back.

I opted for the A-frame because of rain run off and because I like the idea of it looking decorate and being tall. It also seemed like the most viable way to make something so there would be more ventilation come summer time when it gets very hot.

Our neighbor let us borrow his awesome circular saw that has a laser sighting on it, which I’m sure contributed greatly to some of these angled cuts that were completely eyeballed by me. I’m glad I didn’t use our mitre saw for the larger pieces of wood (the top part of the T shape), because the mitre saw was a complete pain to adjust when I did the top door with the 1x1s).

Bunneh says, "Pleez Jeezus save me from teh kitteh"

So far the rabbit absolutely loves the buckwheat we have growing in the less fertile areas of our lawn. This was originally intended as a cover crop for those poor nutrient areas, but they are quickly becoming bunny feed to supplement hay, lettuce and other such things. We have seeds for alfalfa and best get started growing that quickly since she may eat us out of buckwheat and Nate’s take home lettuce scraps pretty quickly.

I have learned that rabbits have a very quick gestation period. The people that gave us the rabbit bred us for her the day they gave her to us since they had already promised the male to someone else. They said she should give birth in 28-30 days. Then we have little walking braises, stews, and soups walking around for the next 2 months or so until they are ready for cooking up. If it turns out that she isn’t pregnant (which sounded unlikely), we will get a buck to house with her and breed with her. If she is pregnant, we’ll wait until those babies are bigger/eaten (whichever comes first?) until we introduce a buck so that he doesn’t eat the wee ones.

Would it be too terrible to post pictures of the first slaughter? This is all a learning process for us and something of an educational experiment, so it seems appropriate to me, but maybe there should just be some fair warning for those who have a weaker stomach or only like fluffy things when they are alive and kicking rather than headed toward a cast iron skillet.

Also, you should listen to this playlist made by Sarah C. in honor of Rosemary, all about Rabbits… Rabbit Mix Pretty awesome stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time is valuable, too

It seems to me that as I have learned to slow down a little bit (a lot a bit?) in my life, I have come to value my time much more than I did when I was running around at the speed of light double booking myself every other week for one thing or another. Emily even seems to think that I never have my phone on me and am completely unreliable when she tries to text or call me. Anyone that has known me for a few years might laugh at how awesome that is, since I used to talk about staring iPhones Anonymous or going to the doctor to get my phone tumor removed.

All of this is most likely because I have found things that are worth taking time to do that otherwise may have seemed slightly tedious or time consuming before, and consuming time wasn’t an option when I had so little of it left at the end of the day and was dozing off on strangers couches and metal tables and coffee shops in the dead of night.

Things like cleaning the kitchen…I most definitely still don’t like doing the dishes, but I’m at least learning to enjoy certain parts of cleaning the kitchen that come after having used the kitchen to make scrumptious meals or Nate has gone on a pickling escapade. Scratching up dirt in the yard by hand rather than renting a tiller make being dirty – in the most literal I’m covered in dirt because I’ve been sitting in it and digging in it sort of way – a very precious thing.

Today was a bit of an internal struggle as I realized that I work with a population that doesn’t really value time in general, theirs or my own. It isn’t uncommon to wait around for 40 minutes for a student to show up for a one-on-one meeting who was so insistent that they need help, but hardly turned in more than an assignment or 2 during the week and didn’t make a single phone call to the people who have the answers. I’m poor at teaching hard lessons, maybe especially because my pay is reliant on them getting things done, so I have incentive to bend rather than let them sink in a “sink or swim” situation.

One of my projects for this year is to make sure that I spend my time in such a way that I don’t regret any of the ways I’m spending it. There are things I’d like to be doing, but I currently love the ones I am doing so much that I don’t feel bad about not working on those other projects. I would like to learn Spanish and practice guitar and violin more, but currently digging in the dirt and reading books on homesteading is a priority for me, and a priority because I just enjoy it. I hope everyone can be comfortable in the way they spend their time and relish in the moments that are just good and time well spent.