Maybe it is crazy to do all this stuff that Mister and I have been doing. Maybe growing your own food, preserving that same food you grew, butchering your own animals, and cooking all your own meals is crazy. But if it is, I really don't want to be sane. I guess the only difference between myself and the people who think it's crazy are the things we buy at the grocery store. 

This past week we added quite a few things to the Twin Cedars. 



Thanks to a former student of mine, her mama, and their next door neighbor, our flock has been replaced. This time we've got a crowd of roosters that I hope will intimidate whatever sly fox is roaming our woods! If not, then, we'll have plenty of chicken in the freezer for the next few months! HA! Speaking of which, Mister butchered his first chicken this weekend... it was kind of by accident really... 

After putting all the new birds in the coop we had our backs turned to the coop door, admiring the new ladies and gentlemen. When we turned around to leave we saw two roosters had snuck (not a word in the Yankee vocabulary, I know) out. One we quickly herded in and the other, well, it quickly squeezed itself through the fence and headed for the woods. Smart, wasn't it? "I'm not letting that fox get another one!" Mister yelled. "Go get the gun!" Knowing we would never catch a skeerdy cat rooster, I ran and got the .22 and in about two minutes Mister was dressing his first farm kill. So, while it was a tad bit by accident, we moved up a notch in our homesteading experience. 

We also got these little cuties!



Well, that one is actually a big cutie. Here's a little cutie:



And one more picture:



We have four in all. We know the big silver one is a buck and we're kind of waiting to find out what the other three are. Heh heh. These will be our breeding bunnies and their offspring will be a new meat source. I've never had rabbit, but I've been reading about it and asking other people who I know have either raised or cooked rabbit before to see what they have to say. It's been fun feeding and petting them... I'll get attached to these, I know. It's their itty bitty babies that I'm going to have to learn to, well... I'd rather not talk about it. 

I've gotten some pretty funny looks about what I intend to do with these little critters. But that's ok. I know exactly where my food comes from. And it absolutely thrills me that pretty soon we won't even need to be buying meat at the grocery store! Unless Mister gets the hankering for steak... or pork... But I'm sure in the not too distant future we won't need to be buying that, either. 

Our final addition this past week were quail.



See that in the bottom right corner? That's an egg! Go figure that after a year of trying to raise laying hens, the first flippin' egg we get is from a stupid quail. *insert eye roll here* I'm not sure how I feel about these things, yet. They seem a little on the "bird brained" side and make random noises. But, again, just another thing to help us be more self sustaining! And with animals this tiny, they are a great space saver! 

While those are all the living new additions, the kitchen had some additions to it as well. Mister and I sneaked into the local golf course went to a nearby field and picked about 30 pounds of pears. Our Saturday and Sunday was full of canning!



So there is a quick update on the happenings around the homestead! And, go ahead, call me crazy. I think I like it :)