Still pretty busy, but look what we've accomplished!

Today was a whirlwind of activity. At 7:20 we crawled out of bed and into our work clothes for a day of errands. The first stop wast to pick up one cubic yard of topsoil from a local landscape supply shop for $21, and then back on the road to a feed store. For another $6, we got a bale of mulching hay. Then, the most exciting stop of the day:



Shoveling horse poop! My roommate happens to have a beautiful horse named Jackie, who produces tons of this every day. We shoveled three huge garbage bags full of the stuff.

Then after a brief stop at Home Depot for some peat moss, we returned home to assemble the beds.


We filled them about a two thirds full of top soil, and worked in some of the manure and peat moss. Then we topped them off with a bit of mulching hay, and watered them down really well.

We ran out of soil after the second bed, so we need to go get more on Monday.

Our next project was to create a little area for growing timothy hay for the rabbits, and to plant some corn (the other beds don't get quite enough sun).


We added a bit of manure and some peat moss, but haven't really improved the soil as much as we need to. Perhaps we'll sprinkle some compost or rabbit manure on it to improve some things.

Everything is going well here! Still tons of work, but at least we accomplished this much.

Timothy hay

Taylor and I are hoping to raise rabbits in the near future for several reasons:


They breed like... well, rabbits.
They're a great source of lean meat
They have a really high ratio of input(food) to output(meat)
They're quiet, don't make a huge mess, and are relatively low-maintenance.
They're a great source of high-nitrogen fertilizer.


After looking into this quite a bit, we've decided it could prove economical and efficient to grow our own food for these rabbits. In addition to giving them leftover greens from the garden, we also plan on growing timothy hay (and eventually wheat straw) to feed them.

This brings me to the second package I was expecting in the mail: timothy hay seeds!


We ordered one ounce of seeds for about five bucks with free shipping. We're hoping this will fill about 100 square feet of area, which should be plenty to feed four rabbits.

Timothy hay is a perennial, so hopefully we can harvest this in a manner that lets it continue to grow without having to reorder more seeds. For five bucks though, I think this might be a great investment. One ten-pound bag of commercial rabbit feed runs about $8, and consists mostly of timothy and alfalfa. With some extra veggies thrown in for more vitamins, I think these rabbits should do just fine.