06/18/2026
Oh man, I’ve been busy! These Facebook algorithms are hard to keep up with so I doubt anyone will even see this, but it’s time to start posting again, here’s a bit of a life update!
While the rabbit herd is doing great and everyone’s making weight beautifully, I don’t think I have a single rabbit picture from the last 2 months. I’ll change that today as I sort litters and decide who goes to freezer camp tomorrow!
So what else have we been up to? Foraging berries, playing in my dense forest before it’s logged this fall, spending time with family playing in the creek, and hatching SO MANY CHICKS! Darn near 40 of them, the hens have been overachieving! Only one single loss of a day old chick. The primary laying flock is on an egg eating spree after I didn’t collect eggs for 4 days and suddenly changed feed, so I’m collecting eggs 3x a day and supplementing a lot to try and fix it. I also hatched a batch of ceanothus Silk Moth caterpillars after finding the mother severely injured, they are growing fast!
My favorite rooster Super Silver, the one who chose to spend all his time with my dogs, got attacked by another rooster who ruptured his eyeball 😞 After a few weeks of careful treatment he’s all healed up but completely blind on one side. But he loves me more than ever, comes inside every chance he gets, joins us on dog walks, and every night sits on my barn light and keeps me in the dark until I feed him his special snacks ON TOP of the rabbit cages where the other birds are forbidden… yeah I’m kind of obsessed with him.
Outside of rabbits my life is fully consumed by dogs, always has been. My old farm dog Rubix has been grumpier and not tolerating even his friends in his space, so we’re making him his own space, but he’s been getting some solid opportunities to do his job (protecting me and the farm from predators like Bears and raccoon, keeping ravens out of the yard, breaking up cat fights, and for fun we do tracking so maybe one day we can use it for something serious.) The new dog Macy is still largely untrained, so I’m putting a ton of work into her. She’s an exceptionally good dog, but needs a little refining, and by golly she NEEDS to stop running into me, not trying to finish my farming career with a broken hip/ femur! They’re rotated 24/7 besides the occasional muzzled adventure together (Rubix hates her, despite a very cute and playful meet and greet), which means twice the time exercising dogs, 3x more time most days because I like to run Garnet separate so she doesn’t get run over. Little middle dog Garnet is perfection, I haven’t had to use her as a service dog much this year, but when she does work she is super professional and engaged! She is trained to provide several medical alerts for me, mostly to make sure I’m safe to drive if out and about, as well as behavior interruption and deep pressure therapy.
I also puppy sat a litter of GSP’s for a neighbor, puppies are so much work but SO rewarding! I’ll breed dogs one day, I just love every step of development. And a little time away from the farm is always nice, I finished a whole book for the first time in years!
And if you made it this far, maybe the most exciting announcement of all, I BOUGHT A PAIR OF SHEEP!! Maria is a purebred Gotland ewe and Bellatrix is her spring lamb daughter (maybe purebred, maybe 1/2 Icelandic, not sure yet), and they act more like dogs than sheep! Just the sweetest and so interactive. Now I wasn’t ready for larger animals yet, but they have been able to stay where they were at the neighbor’s with some wonderful friends taking on part of their care, so it’s worked out well so far. I ALWAYS joked that if she sold Maria I would happily buy her, and when the time came, I had to put my money where my mouth was. No regrets, I love them!!
