As usual, things have been way busy, but I really should update this more often. However, can't fix the past so just gotta go with today. So, what has been happening since last December? Probably not a lot of actual note, so I'll start with "the now" and see where we end up.
Black Rose and Bubba had a litter a month ago and the babies pictures are just now getting put online? Is someone a slacker around here or what?
They're all tortoiseshell colored, as far as I can tell, they're all 'Black' torts. Which means their noses, ears, feet and tail are all the dark gray and will be black as adults. The rest of them will be blond.
They're only a month old, so it's still a bit early to reliably tell genders so I've not checked yet. Guess I should make a guess at genders pretty soon. A doe from this litter is likely to stay here, but not any of the bucks since there's already a fawn buck, Alexander, and a tort buck, Bubba, in the herd.
This tortoiseshell color requires a matched set of recessive color genes. One recessive 'e' from each parent. Which means a tort or fawn bred to a tort or fawn will result in an entire litter of torts or fawns. It's the same with albino. Which is why when breeding rabbits, keeping a color that requires a double recessive can - if one isn't careful - result in a herd of all recessive colors and no way back to the regular colors. Twp agouti colored rabbits - 'agouti' is the standard color pattern of a wild rabbit, white rings around the eyes and nose, white inside the ears, white tail and undercarriage, brown everywhere else - can have any other available rabbit color. Two white rabbits when bred together will only have white babies.
For folks who only have one rabbit or aren't breeding rabbits, then the color probably doesn't matter much. Since the bunnies here at Hillside produce fiber for Hula Bunny yarn, the color does matter since Hula Bunny yarn has three standard colors. There's no dye used, so the colors of the bunnies make the colors of the yarn. At the moment, we need a lot more white bunnies since we're out of Coconut Dream color of Hula Bunny yarn. Since Bubba and Rose's babies are all tortoiseshells, their color of fiber is used to make the tawny Beach Bunny color of Hula Bunny yarn.
These are the same four babies except from three weeks ago when they were only a week old. Baby bunnies do grow quickly.
It's right in front of the bunny hutch so there's loads of 'bunny berries' around the roots of this crazy red flower. It's seriously red and huge.
"Bunny berries" (aka rabbit manure) is the only fertilizer we've been using for the past decade or so. Mostly because it's free, but it's amazingly effective as well.
This is an island, we have huge rainfall so if the garden isn't constantly fed, the nutrients wash away. We do put some 'bio-char' (charcoal without chemicals such as starter fluid) in the gardens to hopefully trap some of the nutrients and keep them where the roots can reach them. Rather like a charcoal water filter, although instead of trying to get rid of 'contaminants', we're trying to keep them within reach of roots.
So, bunny berries and charcoal from fallen branches along with some oystershell from the feed store (it's fed to chickens to provide harder shells) are about the only garden amendments we use. The rest of it is just soil from the yard that we put inside a raised bed garden. Mostly so weeding is a lot easier but also to keep overenthusiastic weed whackers at bay. (Did you know they're called 'whipper snippers' in Austrailia?).
These aren't the 'Molokai Sweets' which are solid purple and a lot sweeter, they're from a sweet potato from the vegetable market. An end of the potato was put in water and it made sprouts. Those were broken off when they were about a foot long and put into the garden with several leaves and about three inches of stem sticking out. Now we have more sweet potatoes. No seeds, no fertilizer, nothing but some bunny berries and the sprouts from a store bought potato.
They're a bit more starchy than the true solid purple sweet potato and will be perfect for potato salad. Soon as I'm done with this update, that's the next project on today's 'to do' list.
When one has a herd of rabbits, other oddball rabbit things seem to pop up as well. This thing is an aluminum wine cooler shaped like a rather wild eyed and maniacal rabbit. It's a vintage 'Arthur Court' wine cooler, they made quite a few quirky wine coolers.
It's kinda cool looking but I don't think we are gonna use it as a wine cooler. A metal wine bucket would sweat a lot, wouldn't it? I suppose it could sit on a towl when it was being a wine bucket? It'd be a hoot to use it as a food dish at a pot luck party. Maybe there's some sort of oval bowl that would fit inside? Well, in the meantime, it's a kewl quirky rabbit thing. I've not shown it to the bunnies, they'd possibly worry about what happened to that rabbit if they saw it.
Believe it or not, this is actually the second of these that have shown up here. Since I don't think we need more than one of them, this one has gone into the shop, Honokaa Treasures, where it will be for sale, should any of you want to drop by Treasures and buy a wine cooler. Treasures is where Hula Bunny yarn is sold, but we can take in any other kind of 'treasure' as well. So, bunny yarn needs a nearby bunny wine cooler, don'tcha think?
Earlier this year we took a trip down to Hilo to pick up another treadle sewing machine.
It had been used as a decorative item and not as a sewing machine, but with a bit of work it's back to being functional again. It can still be decorative of course, but now it can sew, too.
Even though the decal on it screams 'SINGER' in big gold filigree, it's actually a Wilcox and Wilson model D9 machine. They were bought out by Singer around 1905 and all the stock they took over was rebranded with the SINGER name.
Not sure how often you buy sewing machine needles, but they're one of the most standardized things on the planet, as far as I know. If you ask the clerks at any of the fabric shops for a longer sewing machine needle, they'll carefully and inexhaustibly explain to you the difference in sizes are in needle width and not length. It is absolutely incomprehensible that the needles would be different lengths.
It's also got a very non-standard bobbin. Another Not-Singer part. But, they're available if one searched for a 'bagel' bobbin. The longer needles are also available online if one searches for them by some specific model numbers.
The treadle sewing machine has followed the bunny wine cooler into the shop. I've already got a treadle machine as well as two electric ones in cabinets and a carry around electric one as well. Which is enough for one person.
People seem to be doing a lot more craft things these days. As I find mid-century all metal sewing machines and fix them up and take them into the shop, they get bought and taken away pretty quickly. Perhaps it's just that the old machines were built to a higher quality? Or at least, the ones which have survived are all the higher quality ones.
Since we went to Hilo to pick up the sewing machine, we took a side trip to see Anuenue (Rainbow) Falls in Hilo. It had been raining for a few days before - well, "duh"!, it's Hilo, it rains - anyway, it had been raining so there was more water over the falls than usual. It was also more brown than usual.
Folks around here are usually pretty literal about naming things. Hence, there's frequently rainbows at Anuenue Falls. "Anuenue" means "rainbow" in Hawaiian, but you could already figure that out.
They added some sidewalks between the upper and lower viewpoints to the falls since the last time I'd been there. The area under the banyan tree had been cleared out, too. It used to be much harder to access.
