So, last time I put a blog up on this subject it was about tilling our straw bale beds, and getting ready for our Spring garden. However, many things have changed since then in our lives, and we’ve come up with a new plan!
Will There Be A Garden or Chickens?
We are not doing a garden or chickens, yet. We decided this for a couple of reasons:
- I can start a garden anytime, realistically, if I truly wanted to, I put in the work to do so, and I chose specific, hardy plants.
- We are focusing on our Rabbitry for the time being.
- We spent our “garden fund” to start our Rabbitry last year. So, because we did it this way, we wanted to make back a little bit of what we spent on Rabbit start up costs, before spending all of our garden budget that we set aside; however long that takes…
And lastly, the 2 bigger reasons; we are having another baby very soon, and moving soon too! (more on that to come later). As for the lovely Chickens, again, we are focusing on our Rabbits only until we know more about our moving situation.
What Happens With The Rabbitry Area?
If you follow along on our Rabbitry Facebook page, or our Instagram, you may know we have had a few litters of Rabbits, re-homed one of our breeder does, and are about to have 2 more Rabbit litters! Since we re-homed our 3rd breeder doe, we are down to 2 bucks and 2 does. We do plan to fill her spot, and eventually in the future get another buck as well, but like mentioned above, we are moving soon and don’t think it would be beneficial to focus on getting more animals just yet, until we know more on that. So, we are focusing on the ones we have currently!
New Plans For The Yard:
Basically, at the end of last year we tilled our whole yard, mixing in our straw bale beds with the idea in mind that we would do a bigger garden bed the coming Spring with more veggies, and such. After that, I would periodically add the Rabbit fertilizer to it for a little while and then just let it settle until we came to our current time!
Fast forward to our current time, with a new idea in mind my husband tilled it all up for us last weekend, revealing wonderful dirt underneath and big, happy worms! So, with the pasture seed my daughter and I just laid down, (a little late, but in this situation, better late than never I suppose) we should be getting some nice green grass for our yard soon!
The new plan is to move the Rabbit hutches straight back to the back fence instead of up by the back of our house, and have a much nicer pasture area for our Rabbits to munch on. Beforehand, we did not have very good grass for them, and I would give them hay and pellets in their runs (instead of just the hutches) to make sure they were getting enough to eat. So, we are all very glad to be getting our grass back!
A bonus thing that got done was, my husband also built our compost bin area! Any extra Rabbit droppings and hay waste can have a place to go now.
Hopefully this provides some backyard design inspiration to those who have similar set ups. Rabbits really are great for small spaces! When we do start our garden, even with the Rabbits we still have plenty room to make some sort of garden beds, which is so nice! A garden is still a part of our plan to have at this home (unless we are moving sooner than expected). So, if It looks to be working out that way I will have a couple, small garden designs ready for my husband to pick through later!
More updates to come when we start seeing grass pop up, and we move our hutches to their new spots, but for now that is the entire plan for our back yard area!
