If we make it through December

Merle Haggard famously penned the lyrics, “if we make it through December, everything’s going to be alright I know, it’s the coldest time of winter and I shiver when I see that fallen snow”. I feel if we can make it through this first cold month on the farm then we’ll be just fine.

It has been a long fall season here at Pike Mountain Farm. We haven’t updated much but that doesn’t mean we’ve slowed down. Just the opposite, Winter has us busy preparing for frozen water and wind/snow protection.

The chickens have come off pasture for the winter and on nice days they are free to roam the farm. For the days that will be very cold and windy they will be sheltered in our newly built Raken house. What’s a Raken house you ask, it’s a Rabbit and Chicken house, developed by Polyface Farms in VA. And that brings me to our next update- we have rabbits!

Our good friends at The Fit Farmacy got us started with 3 New Zealand rabbits and 3 Silver Fox rabbits, New Zealand’s despite their name are American origin and developed for meat production. Silver Fox’s are an American Heritage breed developed for meat and fur in the 1920’s in Ohio, the breed is so rare, they are considered threatened by the Livestock Conservancy. We plan to begin breeding this spring and will update as meat becomes available. For now, the rabbits occupy the top level of the Raken house and the chickens roam on the ground. Tyler has installed running water to all the rabbits and they seem to be adjusting well to the area.

Update - before we could publish this post our power went off for a few hours and we learned how helpful the running water system is to keep the rabbits in fresh drinking water at all times. Tyler spent two hours outside thawing water lines that froze nearly instantly, when the power went off.

That’s all for now- stay warm friends.