Rabbit Butcher

Today was yet another learning experience here on the farm. I learned how to kill, skin and gut a rabbit, then cook the meat AND I'm in the process of tanning the hide with methods used by Native Americans.

 This is me holding the rabbit's head with Matt Hess the educational director here at the farm. Matt held the rabbit up by it's back legs then karate chopped the back of it's neck, killing it instantly. It was seriously cool. Then he guided me through the rest. The skin pulled off like a glove. Then we broke open the skull and collected the brains for the hide. We put the feet and tail on top of the green house to dry out. Anyone want a rabbit's foot key chain?

This is the rabbit brain we took out. The Native American way of tanning a hide is scraping the hide of all the fleshy parts as the first step. Then you boil the brains, put them in a blender with some warm water and blend. You take that solution and scrub it into the skin. Wait an hour and do it again. Then you roll it up and place some where cool but make sure it won't dry out. Then the next day you scrub the brain solution on it again and then smoke it over a fire and ta-da you have a nice animal hide without any use of chemicals.

I made a frame out of some 12 gage wire and slipped the rabbit hide over it. Then I spent a long time scrapping and scrapping. Right now, I've scrubbed the brain solution on twice and it's rolled up in a bag in my room for the night. We will see tomorrow how everything else goes.

I'm really excited I get to learn how to do this. This is what I love about this farm. You just say hey, I want to learn how to do this and some one says, ok, let's do it! They really want you to learn what you want to. It's awesome! I'll keep you all posted on how it turns out!

Picture Time

Things have been so incredibly busy for me. Full time student, this way over full-time job, and with the recent explosion of the presence of Jesus, I'm doing church related things 4 times a week. I love all of it though. Here are a few pics. I lost my little chip to load pics from my phone to my computer so I had to txt message them all to my email and then transfer them to here. So I have so many more photos but loading them all that way would take forever, so until I find my memory card converter thing-a-meh-jig this is what you get.

 Boar goat playing on a board that I nailed to one of the trees in the back pasture. Oneas and I started dreaming of some kind of things we could make for the goat's to climb on.

This is Nathan's aquaponic syster he built in the greenhouse after the farm saw how well my system worked. On the left is a shallow grow bed with rocks. It is full of plants now. On the right is the tank. On top are plants floating in a thin board on top of the water with their roots directly in the water. The fish are all in there. His system can support 1,000 fish. It's super awesome. I put my 50 big fish in there which I will be harvesting next week!!! We are going to have a big farm fish fry. 

I was Annali's first test subject for her face painting booth for farm day. I think she did a great job, eh? A goat...how appropriate. 

This is Elizabeth. I have no idea what's going on here, but why not put it on the internet, right?

 So the man right next to me is named Virgil. We are on a bridge crossing over I-35. I saw him up there dressed in all black and waving a staff back and forth. I wondered what he was doing so... I pulled over and walked up there, introduced myself and asked what he was doing. He began to tell me he is just praying for everyone driving and for the city of Waco. He had some pretty awesome stories. This is one of those things were people might disagree with what he is doing because he does it in a "weird" way but if you get tangled up in that then you frustrate the grace of God. God can work through anything.

Elizabeth with her new rabbit addition. Cutest thing I've ever seen. The rabbit's name is Helen. 

 This ladies and gents is.... (drum roll please)... Goat Mountain!!! So... Austin and I got done with our work a little early and didn't want to start another task so we embarked on the start of this mountain. We then gained Josh and James in the afternoon and thus completed this masterpiece.

That's right. The center piece is an old bunk bed. There is a ramp going off on 3 sides of it. The ramps are covered in singles in hopes that it will sand the hooves down a little so maybe we have to hoof trim less. 

 I took this awesome panorama photo of the farm tonight. The sky was gorgeous!

My friend Ali works at this store in town. We went into the back of the store where the break room is and there was this cart full of these new things. If you know me, you know I couldn't resist doing this. Haha!