Productive Rabbit Day

We had an extremely busy but productive rabbits today. Chris and I were up early doing some much need weeding, the hot summer and out busy scheduled had put us behind.  There is plenty more to do but at least we got the weeds to stop strangulating our plants.  After our traditional Sunday French Toast breakfast we brought the kids out to help.  Titus and Amber weeded a bit with us and then Titus went to join his brothers.  The boys had a blast challenging each other to see who could pick the most duck weed in 10 seconds.  They cleared out my Elderberry saplings and gave tons of food to the hens.  

It was time to plant our fall garden.  Last year we completely missed the window to get our plants in the ground.  This year we missed the window for seeds but managed to get the plants last weekend.  We bought a variety of cabbage, broccoli, kale, collards, spinach, radicchio, bok choy and strawberries.  Chris furrowed out the eight rows for me. As he did so, he, Amber and I picked out grubs with our hands and threw them to the chickens; my girl may wear taffeta in the garden but she's no girly girl. After a while, the chickens were making quite a ruckus begging for more. Then Amber and I planted the plants and the boys shoveled and delivered the mulch for between the rows.  Now I just have to remember to water the plants.

Chris found a neat snake in the mulch pile and kindly installed a fence to keep out all enemies foreign and domestic.  Speaking of domestic the dogs did exceptionally well today staying in the yard so they got to have a great time too.  

Jared had theater practice from 2-4pm so that was our clean-up alarm.  While he was gone Lance set up a plinking range with dyed water and all.   It had been a while since the boys had out their guns; it was a nice time of bonding for them.  So thankful our neighbors love watching the boys as well.

Update:  In the theme of farming, on October 5th I harvested my first wild mushrooms.  Actually, it was our neighbors idea, he was going to be out of town so he told Lance where they were (behind the Oak Tree you see above) so we could get them.  We ended up harvesting 3 pounds worth (along with a smelly centipede and a startlingly large spider I could have done without).  The mushrooms are call "Hen in the Woods" (among other things) and have a myriad of health benefits including curing cancer.  Their most import feature to me was that they have no poisonous look alikes.  Chris and I ate them in scrambled eggs as suggested for three days and were still here.  We also froze some so our neighbor could enjoy them when he returned.  The extra pieces I placed around our Oaks in hopes that we'll get our own mushroom colonies growing in the coming year.