chromedome

The notion of a Spam-carving contest put me in mind of this comedy about butter-carving competitions from a decade or so ago. Well worth watching, btw, if your sense of humor skews just that little bit dark. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349451/

My daughter sent me this one (c/o the "Dubious Restaurant Design" office):

Two to be aware of, this weekend: "Alasko" brand IQF raspberries and "Antioxidant blend" are being recalled for potential norovirus contamination. They were mainly sold into the foodservice channel, it appears, though you may also have seen them sold as bulk freezer packs in retail stores. The recall affects everybody from Ontario east. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/alasko-brand-iqf-whole-raspberries-and-iqf-antioxidant-blend-recalled-due-norovirus?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23 The other one is Saladito brand lupini beans in a jar, which are being recalled for botulism. They were only sold in Quebec, apparently, but I'm throwing it in here (despite the lack of an ongoing Quebec presence on the boards) because a) sometimes eGers vacation there, and also b) products from Quebec often find their way into Ontario as gifts and such. Though I know that Anna N, for one, can be marked safe from receiving beans as a gift. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/saladitos-brand-lupini-beans-recalled-due-potential-presence-dangerous-bacteria?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

It feels odd to say this, given that we haven't even reached the solstice yet, but we're well into our last breeding cycle for this year. Little grey doe Silverbell's kits have been weaned, we have new babies from the black does, the brown does are due in the next day or two, and our remaining white doe (Sugar) will have hers around month-end. That means her litter will be ready for harvest around the end of October or beginning of November, at which point we'll get everything buttoned down and snugged up for the winter. This also means we'll be rehoming our current generation of breeders in favor of new stock, which will be just a bit melancholy. They all have their own distinct personalities, of course, and we've grown fond of them. The bucks in particular are very sociable and enjoy being petted and handled. But refreshing your breeding stock is always a part of good husbandry, and you do it more often with small animals that have rapid reproductive cycles. We've already rehomed Silverbell into a household where she'll be a pet. Our brown buck was a pet before he came to us, and may go as either a pet or a breeder. We aren't going to be raising any brown bunnies next year, so there's also a possibility that we'll offer all three as a package deal for someone who wants to start raising rabbits. Going forward we're going to have a buck and two does in each of white, black and grey. This is because (as mentioned previously) my GF has plans for the pelts. Originally she'd planned on white and black only (and yes, we'd joked about her Cruella de Vil color scheme) but little Silverbell was so beautiful that she decided there was room in her vision for shades of grey as well. We already have our second-generation breeders in hand, though most of them aren't yet of breeding age. The exception is our two black does, who are sisters and were kept back from one of our earlier litters. They're already second-generation. The grandkids named our new black buck Pepper, which was in fact the same name as our original black buck (the one that had the misfortune to meet the mastiff in person). He never had the opportunity to contribute to the gene pool, so allowing the new guy to become his namesake won't confuse our record-keeping. The grey buck and does don't have names yet, though one of the bucks will probably be "Smokey" because my granddaughter likes that name. Our juvenile white buck is an interesting case. Most white rabbits have pink eyes, but his are a startlingly deep, vivid blue. It struck me there was an obvious association there, so I've dubbed him Frank after "Ol' Blue Eyes." He's quite the little charmer, very affectionate and keen for attention. So are the new greys, but Pepper is a bit stand-offish so far. It'll be fun getting to know them all over the coming months.

There's tobacco farming in southern Ontario as well, but I guess that would probably have been less of an adventure (probably less money, too!).

We have large blueberry and cranberry sectors in the local agricultural economy, and in 2020 when COVID hit our provincial government - in its state of ignorance-is-bliss - assumed that, if they weren't letting foreign workers in to do the harvesting, there would be a large body of un/underemployed locals willing to take up the challenge. This ignored a couple of salient points that might have registered, had said govt been collectively in better touch with reality: 1) most of the un/underemployed locals live in urban areas and/or lack their own vehicle/the kind of budget necessary to drive out to the berry farms, especially given the wages involved vs. the price of gas; 2) the locals stopped doing that kind of work about, oh.... 60 or 70 years ago, which is why the farmers started bringing in migrants in the first place; and 3) THERE IS A FRICKIN' SKILLSET INVOLVED, and the farmers work with the same group of laborers year after year so they don't have to retrain it constantly. Given that the current government could not hold power without the rural vote, it was quick to rectify this error in the ensuing berry seasons.

I guess medicine and epidemiology count as science, so I'll put this here. A look at the cost of "presenteeism" in the restaurant world: https://qz.com/paid-sick-leave-for-workers-could-prevent-40-of-restau-1850506870

My mom's osteoporosis is bad enough that she could actually break her jaw on an extra-crunchy nut (or apple, or...). So yeah, she's extra-circumspect. Better safe than sorry.

I still haven't forgiven him for eating the last mango in Paris...

Something is almost always better than nothing. When I had no yard and no community garden plot, I put lettuces in pots on a windowsill. It wasn't a practical solution to my salad-greens supply, but it made me feel better.

For Ontario residents, Nature's Pick brand of pre-cut squash pieces is recalled for listeria. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/nature-s-pick-brand-fresh-cut-cubed-butternut-squash-recalled-due-listeria?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

My GF and I keep somewhat different hours, as her biology (and work schedule) skew slightly more nocturnal than mine. Last night she was coming to bed around midnight, and heard a shrill "EEEEEEE!" from the direction of the rabbits, followed immediately by another. She ran to the door with a flashlight and saw a raccoon departing at speed, presumably having made the acquaintance of our electric fence. The mastiff was out through the door at full stride in a heartbeat, pursuing the little fleabag like an avenging fury, but it apparently had enough of a head start to get to safety in a tree. I suspect that particular raccoon, at least, will have little appetite for any further visits.

LOL However enthused my GF might be about the idea, we share a home with my stepdaughter and three grandkids. So no. And that's before we even get to the respective costs of all-over sunscreen and bug repellent. As it happens my father's copies of Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News were literally some of my earliest reading, so at the age of 7 or so I could have given you a pretty good rundown of Stout's ideas and methodology.

"No till" is very much the plan, yes. I'm currently using plain ol' corrugated under the beds to suppress weeds, but have evaluated other options as well (and will continue to do so). Current plan is to build deeper, more permanent beds as I go, adding manure/compost and soil each year.

To tell the truth, I can't imagine what an appropriate emoji might be. ETA: ...though my current earworm is now one of Jerry Lee Lewis' biggest hits...

Sometimes Twitter still spits out a gem...

I have that book as well. It's one of my favorites; came as a boxed set with the "everything is better with butter' volume.

LOL Not looking to get into it at that level. I'm currently using the waste from the animals to build the soil in my garden, which is not currently in good condition. The year I first dug a garden here (the property's been in my GF's family for several years now, so I've had the use of a patch) I dug over a 4X8 foot bed and hauled away 5 (IIRC) large wheelbarrows of just the larger stones. My frame of mind at that juncture could be characterized by the Brits' idiomatic "Sod this for a lark!" and so I've been using raised beds since. This year I was able to (finally!) budget for a load of topsoil, which in combination with the bunnies' droppings should set me up well for the coming years. The droppings are mixed with scraps of hay that also fall through the cages, so I'll get some grass popping up wherever I use it without composting it first, but I'll live with that. I've got a compost pile started, which hopefully will get hot enough to kill the grass seeds and make it only a transient problem. We hope to add some laying hens to the mix over the next few weeks, and chicken droppings will certainly help heat up the compost. The plan is that next year I'll have a "this year" pile (aged) and a "next year" pile with current droppings. Rabbit droppings can go directly onto the garden, so I can use them even if I run out of compost that first year, but chicken droppings emphatically can't without being composted first. The chickens may indeed get to forage on the patches recently vacated by the outdoor bunnies, but that's as close as I'll get to any kind of formal system. And of course the grandkids will still want to run on the grass in bare feet, so there's a limit to how much manure we want in random spots around the yard.

I've been corrected "off camera," as rabbits apparently are not rodents but lagomorphs. They were at one point classed among the rodents, but that was corrected a century or so ago. The "need to chew" part was quite accurate, mind you. Hat tip to Smithy for the correction, and an article here for those who like to know about these things: https://www.charlotte.providencevets.com/site/blog/2020/12/18/are-rabbits-rodents

Our cost varies. We've gotten some for free, some for $20, some for $30. Some we've traded for. "Meeting the protein needs of my girlfriend" is not entirely accurate. Poultry, fish, dairy (she eats her weight in cheese) and vegetable sources of various kinds meet her protein needs quite adequately. "Meeting her emotional need for something a bit meatier than chicken or turkey" would be more accurate, and that is indeed the goal. Also I like rabbit, and will happily eat it every week.

Taking a momentary break from today's work (an article on baby names, of all things) to touch on a practical note or two about raising bunnies. One thing a lot of people ask is "how much meat do you get out of this?" The answer really depends on the breeds you're raising, how large an establishment you can manage, and how hard you want to push your livestock. My GF (who, as mentioned upthread, handles the management side of things) tells me that a doe could have up to 10 litters/year, though that's a Victorian-era level of pregnancy that's very hard even on rabbits. We plan to go no more than 5-6 at most, and in future to give them the winters off (we kept them breeding this past winter, largely because we were still in the "exploring this whole thing" stage). The number of kits per litter varies widely - we've had as few as 2 and as many as 14 in one litter - but consensus within the "homesteader demographic" is that 8 is a good working average for planning purposes. So if you have 6 does as current breeders (as we now do; we've had up to 8 previously), the math looks like this: 6 does X 8 kits by 10 litters (max) equals 480 hypothetical kits; or at our projected volume half of that number. In our case, harvesting Flemish Giants at 16 weeks of age, we've been averaging 3 lbs dressed weight. More quick math, then, gives us potentially 720 lbs of meat in our freezer for our year's efforts. In practice, it's not going to look like that. Sadly one does lose some kits along the way, and in the case of that one doe I'd mentioned above the attrition sometimes reached half a litter. We've also sold a lot of kits as pets or breeders, which helps defray our costs but of course takes meat out of our freezer. The most recent sale was just yesterday, a 12-week kit. The couple had been out a few days ago to pick their bunny, a buck from the two near-simultaneous litters we'd gotten from our black does. One had only 2 kits and the other had 10, and the ones from the 2-kit litter are HUGE compared to their cousins. It was one of those that went to this couple. In the intervening three days they'd acquired a cage, a soft bed, a jacket-style harness and leash, and - in the wife's words - every toy ever devised for a rabbit. I think he's going to have a very happy life. Another question we often get is how this works out, cost-wise. Well... this is something we'd ideally have researched thoroughly before getting started, but - to reiterate - that's not how we roll around here. So we're just now getting to that part of the exercise. My GF's inquiries have given us a rule of thumb that a 50-pound sack of pellets equates to roughly 200 cups (here we go again, converting between weight and volume measures!), and an adult rabbit ordinarily requires 1 1/4 cups/day. That works out to 160 rabbit/days of feed per sack, and a sack costs us $27 and change CDN. With 8 breeders, that would nominally work out to 20 days per sack, but in practice that's not the case. Pregnant and nursing does have higher requirements, and some of our does will always be pregnant or nursing until the winter layover, so that's an added cost. Then there are all the kits (currently 30 or so indoors, and another 10 adolescents outdoors on grass at the moment), and our future breeders for when we refresh our bloodlines (5 currently on grass, the 2 black does are already second-generation). So in practice I'm currently going through roughly a sack a week, because even the pastured bunnies require some pellets. Additionally they get hay, which is relatively cheap (I live in an agricultural area) and has cost me about $80 total since we moved here and began purchasing it by the bale. That's 10 months now. Having the ravenous "teenagers" pastured out on grass should help keep our costs relatively low during the summer (another reason for letting them rest over winter). My best guess, going back through bank records, is that we're into this project to the tune of $1800 or so in feed, cage materials, food/water bowls and the gravity-fed watering system that's currently awaiting revision. We've sold approximately 30 kits to the best of our recollection, at $30 each, which has covered about half of our costs. We've harvested 30-odd as well (I could get an exact number by going back through our records, but don't want to take the time), of which a few have been bartered for various items (a tow for my van after a flat tire, the aforementioned vanity countertop, etc), so all in all I think we've arrived at a point where our cost/food rabbit has come down below $30, or roughly where it would be if we were buying them from the supermarket (where they're not always available). We know we'll need to spend on materials at a lower level going forward, probably just one more roll of wire to build an updated cage and then the occasional purchase of plain pine boards for shelters and nest boxes (rodents need to chew, and their shelters take a beating). So with more pasturing, and drawing down to just our 8 breeders in winter, we should be able to get our net cost down to maybe $20/rabbit, dressed and in the freezer. At an average of 3 lbs that's under $7/lb, which as this kind of special-diet scenario goes is not bad at all. It's comparable to the regular price of many beef/chicken/pork cuts in my neck of the woods, and cheaper that anything like lamb, veal, and farmed venison or bison (sale prices, of course, are a whole other thing). As always, feel free to ask questions.