More is better….. right?

Now you might be thinking that … hey, those city folk have done ok…..   they moved in, reno’d a house, started new jobs, got a puppy, made a chicken coop, got in some chickens and got them to start laying eggs.  They’ve tilled and developed their garden, planted garlic, muddled through forest fires, hatched their own chicks, and so far… survived a Kootenay winter, still all in once piece.  What more could they possibly want to do besides rest up for planting season – which is clearly going to be a challenge with that massive garden.

Well darned if we haven’t expanded on our animal situation.  Can’t have enough animals right?   Clearly the chickens survived when we knew nothing about chickens – so why not take on another animal species we know nothing about! Seems our crazy might be showing again! And is solves that little problem of the gobs and gobs of fodder which is just sitting there calling out to be used – because we don’t have nearly enough chickens to eat it all.  We can’t have that now can we.

So while perusing the postings on the “Farm the Kootenay’s” site we stumble on a local (sort of!) farmer who is selling her rabbitry…… hhhhmmmm… rabbits!!!  Cute, furry, snuggly
Thumpers!  How hard can those be? And getting babies can’t be as hard as hatching the chicks were!  Don’t rabbits just sniff each other and babies pop out? Seems the farmer hurt her back recently and can no longer care for her rabbits.  Comes complete with all the rabbitry cages, food dishes, water dishes and a bunch of resident rabbits. Now this is an animal I can get behind.  They’re cute!  Really adorable!

It was actually something that we had talked about from time to time, but not something that we thought we would look into until spring possibly.  But the opportunity presented itself, so we had to look at it.  So 5 cages, 2 adult purebred Flemish giant rabbits – one boy, one girl.  Girl Flemish giant just had babies, 7 of them.  Then they were throwing in 1 adult New Zealand girl rabbit, and 3 New Zealand boys. Google tells us that mixing the two breeds makes for great eating rabbits – hey what!!??  Oh ya….. uuuuhhhmmm….  almost forgot about that part.  I will put this out of my city mind for now…. cause I am getting pretty bunnies!!!!  It was a no-brainer – so we chat with the rabbit owner and make arrangements to go get ’em!

Once again, one of our awesome neighbours and his daughter come to our rescue and offer to help us get all the animals, the cages, and the assortment of rabbit paraphernalia home, in exchange for a couple of the rabbits for themselves.  Really??  You just want some rabbits???   Seriously nice folks!  So there is Fallon & Darren in their car, our neighbour and his daughter in their truck, with a trailer attached, and Chuck & I in our truck all convoying down the highway to find our rabbits.

If you have never experienced it before, house directions from country folks go something like this:  take the hwy out to the junction, hang a left, head out past the turn off to the Krestova bridge, about 3 minutes past the co-op there will be a hydro substation on your right – turn left – follow the windy road till it straightens out and you see the red sign for the laboratory (you don’t want to know) where the road will fork – keep to the right and go down the hill – all the way to the end – last house on the left with the big garage and the white truck pretty much buried in snow.  (what’s in the big garage? ) This place was truly isolated….. way isolated! In the – someone is gonna have to back up if we meet another car – kind of way.

A couple of hours of tearing down the cages and safely stashing the rabbits in pet carriers, along with a beautiful rooster that they gave us for free, and we are back on the road headed for home.  We just barely get the cages together before we have no light left at all – and got our new bunnies safely back in their homes.  Then we all just stood there and stared at what we had just done….. doubled our animal count in one day.  Owl’s Hollow Homestead is now full of life!  If you are keeping track: 2 fine roosters, 9 lovely hens, 2 baby chicks, 6 gorgeous adult rabbits and 7 adorable baby bunnies.  Oh yeah… don’t forget 1 awesome puppy and a sassy city cat.

And …..  I did mention they were Giant Flemish rabbits right?!