House Progress . . . and Rabbits

 

So! When we last left our intrepid house-rehabber, he had pulled down the ceilings and was slowly and arduously wheelbarrowing the detritus into the dumpster parked outside the house. He also continued removing paneling from the walls to expose the original stone or plaster, revealing all the many colors the house was painted inside at one point.

He definitely filled that dumpster, which was picked up last week, but he did not quite finish the clean-up. Even absent that handy dumpster, however, the work must go on, so he started filling trash cans and old feed tubs for transport to the dump.

There are still a couple of rooms that need to be cleaned up, but it's beginning to look more like a house that can be worked on, rather than a house that should just be razed.

It's a long time before we will be inhabiting this house, but we've moved in some new tenants in the meantime.

Hasenpfeffer!

We have, in the past, discussed getting meat rabbits, but I'm always reluctant to add yet more animals to our menagerie. Unlike A. and the children, who want allll the animals. 

However, when our neighbor asked us if we would like to take his granddaughter's 4-H meat rabbits--she's no longer doing 4-H, and he's a cattle rancher, not a rabbit-fancier--I couldn't really say no. He wouldn't even take any money for the rabbits. Or the home-built hutch he insisted we take, as well. Or the half-full bag of rabbit food he likewise bestowed upon us.

So now we have six meat rabbits. Two bucks, and four does. 

Our neighbor had them all in the hutch, but we felt bad having them in such a small enclosure.

Jasper sat here by the hutch for HOURS the day we brought the rabbits home. He wasn't the least aggressive, interestingly, he just appeared fascinated. Maybe he thought they needed herding.

Rabbits can actually be somewhat difficult to keep in, due to their habits of digging and gnawing. That's why we put them on the concrete porch of the casita next door. No rabbit is gnawing or digging out of a concrete-floored room with concrete walls. 

We were originally going to separate the bucks with two does each by having the white ones in the casita and the brown ones in the hutch, but we decided instead to put a divider down the center of the casita porch so the brown ones have more room, too. A. is going to do that today.

We might have to use the hutch to separate the bucks after the does have babies, because we're not sure how aggressive and problematic the bucks might become with the young. To be honest, we're not sure about anything, because we've never had rabbits before.

We'll learn, though. And isn't that what life is all about? Growing and learning every day?

Right. Or something.