This month we stayed inside a lot to stay warm, avoid the nasty roads, and finish up our tiny house addition! Well, actually Landon did ice fish quite a bit too. We also enjoyed our first Christmas in the tiny house as a family, which was so fun!
Keep on reading to hear about our adventures this month!
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More Venison/Rabbit/Chicken In The Freezer
We started out the month by filling our freezer again with another butchering and processing day. First, we processed another round of meat rabbits, and boy are we starting to get the hang of it. I believe it was about 20 rabbits in total this time.
Then we still had six roosters from our new round of chickens that we didn’t butcher the first time around. We needed to let them grow a bit bigger to be sure they were roosters and not hens. So, a bit more chicken went in the freezer.
It’s still a challenge butchering our animals in below-freezing temperatures but we make it work! We were going to process our two remaining deer that are hanging but they were too cold to even cut into the meat, so we will have to wait till a bit of a warmer spell in a few months to process them completely.
First Egg Day
Now that all the roosters are gone from our new flock of hens, we were anxiously awaiting our first eggs. With the three different varieties of chickens, we have started to get three different shades of brown eggs and they are beautiful!
We actually have way more eggs than we can handle right now so we have passed them along to friends and family! It’s such a blessing to have an abundance and be able to share it with others, especially since most of the winter we barely had enough eggs for ourselves.
Lost A Litter Of Bunnies
We bred all our rabbits at the same time of the month to streamline the processes going forward. When they all give birth at around the same time it makes it easy to have one butchering day instead of multiple.
Unfortunately, we got hit with a very cold week and some of the babies just didn’t stay warm enough. We lost a full litter and a few more over the next week. It was devastating but we have solutions so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s a lot more challenging having babies born in the winter months, but our female rabbits definitely prefer being pregnant in the winter versus the summer!
Finishing House Addition & Getting Our Christmas Tree Up
It was so exciting to finish the inside of our house addition this month! It is so cozy. The addition acts as a living room/playroom, has a sleeping loft, and also houses our laundry and wood pellet stove. Oh, and Landon’s office too.
We even fit a Christmas tree in the corner! We cut it down from our own land and had lots of fun decorating it with cranberries, popcorn, and dried oranges this year.
It was our first Christmas in the tiny house and also Harmony’s first Christmas! We had fun gifting her a baby doll that she has already learned to give kisses to. Maybe it will prepare her for the arrival of our next baby in the coming months.
Barred Owl In Our Chicken Coop!
One of the craziest moments this month was when a barred owl overtook our new chicken coop. As I was doing my nightly chores I noticed all the chickens huddled outside of the coop, which was very odd.
I opened the door to the coop to look inside and the owl was perched on a roost as if it owned the place! I quickly grabbed Landon and before we knew it, the owl had flown out on its own.
As freaky as it was, it was also so cool being so incredibly close to an owl. That just doesn’t happen every day! Thankfully none of our chickens were injured in the process either.
Don’t forget to read the next blog post – Reflections on 2021 here! See you all in the New Year!
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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