PorchLight Acres Homestead

05/04/2026

Animals available on the farm.

These are mouse masters, 2026 models, will be able to roll out from production in two weeks and four weeks from now. All socialized and from mouse master distributors.

Rabbits were "rescues " but we're looking to rehome. Would be excellent pets or 4H project bunnies. They need socialized more, and some TLC. I will try my best to get their nails trimmed soon, because they need them.

04/27/2026

Donna dear closed our kidding season with a bang. A beautiful set of doe twins! I'm so glad to have a set of doe twins! Mama is doing well and babies seem to be getting a good start. We will probably have a few goats available for sale this year if anyone is interested.
I forgot to post about them, but Jessica also gave us a doe/buck set of twins several days ago. These second time moms are doing so beautifully with their little ones. Jessica kept herself confined for a few days with her babies, and it looks like Donna may do the same.
All babies this year are Premier Pastures Harvey offspring and the ones that will be available will be ready to go in August.
I'll make an official post about the babies, hopefully with better pictures.
I'm really struggling with one of our bucklings, I want to keep him, but Harvey has a lot is years of studding to do before he needs to be replaced, so I hope someone wants to take him off my hands!

04/10/2026

One more doll from our first freshener Auri! Auri is very confused about what to do with her, but she is very maternal as well so it's been humorous to watch. Hoping she will do well with this little one! More pics to come!

04/03/2026

More pictures to come, but Porchlight Acres has their first set of twins for the year, and I'm sure we will have a couple more tomorrow!
Peanut gave us a black and white doe and a beautiful brown moon spotted buckling!

01/29/2026

This past weeks lessons:
1. Always have a butcher date
2. Make sure you butcher on said date

We've had rabbits that needed processed for way longer than I care to admit. We moved. We had a baby. Life kept moving on, and at the time, they were mowing down the garden space really well in their tractors, so, no big hurry minus the feed cost. But when you have more rabbits in the wings waiting for tractors, and a polar vortex coming to town, things get nitty gritty real fast.

I dispatched 32 rabbits on the Friday the storm was to hit while it was 9 degrees, then 6, then 4; guys, it got cold. Then, Friday night the hubs and I stayed up until 4 a.m. processing as many as we could. Then my Saturday was consumed with the rest. Then breaking down the rabbits to primals. THEN deboning everything because the plans for this round of rabbits is to grind for breakfast sausage, brats, and possibly deli meat- minus back straps which will become nuggets.

It was a lot of work. I just finished with cleaning up the back straps and bagging nuggs.

Want to know what the breakdown was?
For 32 rabbits we got:
•38 pounds of meat to grind
•9 pounds of nuggets
•23 pounds of dog food (this is excess fat, trim, some bone, and unfortunately some meat that was in contact with organs too long)
•5 lbs of organ meat (also for the dog)
•Probably 4-5 gallons of rabbit stock for cooking with
•All the bones and leftover bits from stock was given to the birds for an extra protein boost in this cold weather
•64 hind feet for eventual key chains
•32 tails for cat toys and key chains
•64 ears and 64 front stumps to dehydrate for dog treats
•32 heads to eventually deflesh and use for craft or maybe sell
•32 hides to add to my collection for future projects

The only thing that went to "waste" were the stomach and intestines, but even the dog and cats have nibbled on those.
We've been trying since the beginning to utilize as much as possible of every animal we raise and put in our freezer because we feel like we owe it to them, as stewards, to utilize every bit we can and not waste the gifts they gave us.

Being a caretaker is wild. Having that load of stress off my mind is so nice. After this cold stretch, we will move more young rabbits into the tractors, they will be processed NEXT month. Then another batch in April. And they WILL be processed lol

10/22/2025

When you can't have more of something, so you get something else...

10/22/2025

Ehhehum... pardon my goat mama voice... these are things you don't think of when recording.

10/11/2025

09/19/2025

Sometimes, rabbits scare you.

Was doing chores on a hot day and saw this guy. He'd finally gotten some shade and a nice breeze and dude was soaking it in and passed out. You have to watch for the subtle belly heaves of breathing or say sunbathing to try to startle them.
This guy didn't care that I'd shouted at him, he was all about the nap lol

This will be the last batch of rabbits we put in this cage. We've had our for 4 years now and after putting about 150 rabbits through it, it's been chewed up to the point where the only thing holding it together now is the wire itself! We've got a few more tractors to build in the future, but we're getting closer to having enough tractors for our alternating litters.

Should have a couple meat litters arriving at the end of the month!

09/07/2025

After some consideration and tutelage from goat mentors, we decided to remove Abner and Jethro from the page as for sale. Maybe next year we will have some kids to offer up for sale when we have seen how the moms perform on delivery and milk production.
We've had some setbacks in the milking realm this year, between having to deworm heavily after all the rain and some poor field management on our part, and then a few weeks ago I twisted my ankle in the pasture and sprained it bad enough that when it was time to start milking again I couldn't walk!

Now, we are getting back in the swing of things and these two bucks will fill our freezer, their hides will be used, their skulls will become art pieces and their bones will make stock and dog bones. And next year, maybe we will have some kids to sell, maybe even some nice does!