November started with our first snow of the year, right on the first day of the month, and boy was it beautiful! It continued to snow throughout the month and really feel like winter.
We focused on stocking our freezers full of meat this month and enjoying time with friends and family. Let’s chat about it…
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Hawk Eats Chicken
One of the first days of the month we found a hawk eating one of our younger chickens when we came outside to do the chores in the morning. The new coop that Landon built is not under a lot of tree cover (besides there are no leaves on the trees right now anyways) and the chickens are quite smaller and not fully grown yet, making them an easy target!
Our dogs weren’t let out of the barn yet that morning either to scare off the predators. We quickly purchased some bird netting and will be hanging that over a good portion of the coop area.
Thankfully, it appeared to be a rooster that lost its life, which we would have been butchering in a few days anyways, and not a hen.
Processing 21 Rabbits
This was actually our first time processing a whole batch of rabbits at once! We have processed a few here and there but never this many – 21 to be exact!
With our butcher room all set up and all the right supplies, like our Hopper Popper and vacuum bag sealer, we were ready to go! It took a few hours but now we have a freezer shelf full of rabbit meat for the winter. We’ll be processing about 10 more soon too, in about a month.
It’s so satisfying seeing all our hard work paying off. We’ve been raising rabbits for a year and a half now, feeding them every morning and night and loving on them! Now, to see all our hard work come to fruition and our systems working out, we are so thankful to have this step of self-sufficiency!
Related Post: 7 Meat Rabbit Books You Need To Read To Start Your Rabbitry
Garage Door Installed
One of the major projects this month was installing a garage door on the side of our barn so we can pull our vehicle in during winter. It took a lot of problem-solving on Landon’s end to first figure out how to knock out the opening, frame it, and then finally install the garage door itself.
Landon did it all on his own and to say I am proud of him is an understatement! Installing a garage door, especially on an old barn, is not an easy feat but he did it so well! After a week of working hard at the task, it is finally complete, and having it installed makes our lives just that much easier now that winter is here to stay.
Butchering Roosters
After one weekend of butchering the rabbits, the next task was butchering all of our roosters from our new flock. If you don’t remember, we purchased 61 chickens from Tractor Supply spontaneously because they were almost free!
We knew we would be needing a new flock next year and so we decided to go for it, and hopefully have a lot more eggs to sell at the Farmer’s Market this summer! However, these chickens were unsexed so we had to wait till they were fully grown to determine if they were hens or roosters.
We started the morning by first separating the hens and roosters. Then, we butchered the roosters humanely in our killing cone and took out the breast meat. The birds were still a bit too small to make plucking, defeathering, and saving the whole bird worth it.
About 30 of the birds were roosters and so we filled another shelf in our standing freezer with chicken meat. I love to cook it in our instant pot, and boy is the flavor just phenomenal! It is nothing like the taste of store-bought meat!
We can’t wait to raise meat chickens this summer and sell some of them to the local community! Everyone deserves great tasting and healthy chicken that is farm fresh.
Hunting & More Venison
Hunting season opened up and Landon was able to get some practice in. He has been learning how to hunt our land and will be setting up tree stands next year!
This year was definitely a year of just learning and preparing, as he has never hunted before! I’m confident he’ll shoot a great big buck next year.
We were able to fill our freezer with venison as well this month between all the roadkill we acquired and what Landon was able to shoot! We love venison so much, it’s definitely one of our favorite meats to eat, and so we are so excited and grateful to have a shelf full of it.
Working On The Addition
And as if Landon wasn’t busy enough, he is also working extremely hard on finishing the inside of our house addition that he built this summer! The goal is to complete it by Christmas, and even try to fit a small Christmas tree from our land in the corner…we can’t wait!
More updates on the completed addition coming next month!
Making Bone Broth
We had such a wonderful month celebrating birthdays and Thanksgiving with lots of friends and family. We are truly grateful for everyone in our lives and all the friends we’ve made since moving to our homestead.
It was also nice to celebrate Thanksgiving with our little family since it was Harmony’s first! We cooked our own home-raised turkey and it was so delicious.
I also made bone broth for the first time out of the carcass and it is tasty…nothing at all like store-bought broth! I can’t wait to make more this summer and hopefully can it for our pantry shelves.
I can’t wait to see what happens on the homestead next month! Talk soon!
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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