No a rabbit and chicken didn’t destroy the strawberry beds.

April 14, 2025

Our biggest goal on the homestead this year is to simplify and grow what we need. Part of simplifying is planning so we are doing less on the spur of the moment. Usually butchering is one of those tasks I announce “we are harvesting” about an hour before we start. Today we actually did a planned harvesting. Hmm, I might like this planning thing.

Chickens

We butchered five roosters. We had six, but chose the biggest and most docile rooster from the butchering bunch to be added to our flock. His name is Lucky. This will give us the best ratio of roosters to hens for maximum fertility when collecting eggs to incubate. We started our first incubation of eggs from our daughter’s family’s hens. The next batch will be from our flock. Our goal is to have about 20 nice laying hens by late fall. Once we have the ones we want to carry over winter, we will butcher the older hens from our flock.

We moved two of our flocks together as well. When you add hens or rooster to your flock, do it at night. There is no guarantee the flock will accept them, or that the newbies will like the new flock. It is the best way to introduce them with the least amount of fighting. This has simplified our feeding. Plus, we can now figure out a means to automate the chickens coming in and out.

Rabbits

We put the second group of Does in with the bucks for breeding. Honestly, I am not sure if we should have waited a day. I am leaving them in for two days to give us time to get some work done in their colony. The colony and inside grow out pens were both supposed to get cleaned out. We cleaned out the colony and put everything back into it with fresh straw, hay, and water. When we started cleaning out the grow out area, I realized this was one of those things we did foolishly. It took way too much time to clean it out due to needing to climb from section to section. Its worked great for over a year, but working great and taking too much time wasn’t what we were going for now. With this in mind, I deconstructed the grow out pen. We are figuring out the best way to automate feeding and watering for the summer months. We don’t breed the rabbits during the frigid winter months.

As a side note. When we were both working off the homestead, we found ways how to make things easy to do with off the homestead jobs. We did anything major on the weekends and days off. We also did a lot more dividing and conquering. Now that we are looking to be able to get away for a few days to a week at a time, the place needs to be easier for our grandson to help. Plus, it will mean less time and more efficiency for every day.

Strawberry Beds

The strawberry beds are a disaster. Not because an animal ate them during the winter, but because I made a few mistakes while transplanting them. Last year we moved the strawberries and transplanted others. I’ve planted and replanted strawberries for many years. It wasn’t that I didn’ tknow what to do, but I was running out of time and good weather, so I wasn’t as mindful as I should have been.

We planted the strawberries in Hügelkulture which I refer to as Hugels. Here is a video I did on Hugels and our blueberries so you can get an idea of what a Hugel is and how they work. I love them!

The winter rains washed away parts of the Hugels because I hadn’t built them up high enough. Now I have dead strawberries. I added soil to all five of the strawberry beds building up the base. Two of the beds weren’t too bad and we will have strawberries from them. The other three I will need to purchase new berries and replant. It’s not ideal, but it is early so I have hope it will all go well.

Daily, I walk around the garden. Sometimes it’s a great little walk. Other times it’s looking how I can do something better. Today, the focus was on maximizing the strawberry harvest! When the strawberries beds are replanting and growing, I’ll do a video on them. Basically on what not to do when planting strawberries.