Thursday Links

I haven't spent a ton of time online this week- friends of ours offered us the chance to get away for a couple of days and stay down at their place on the coast. As much as I love the mountains, the ocean holds a special place in my heart- so we jumped at the opportunity. Thankfully, my mom is able to take care of the animals and garden for us, making it possible to sneak off for a little while. (Thanks, Mom!)

One of the things that I like best about heading out for a couple of days, is how dramatic the changes seem when we get back. We went from no strawberries to a handful of red ones, and a whole bunch more that are almost there. The peas had just sprouted, and their leaves weren't open yet- yesterday each one had at least four leaves on them. Hooray! Between photos from the trip and here, I've got some good pics to share tomorrow.

But for today, we'll keep it simple and stick to our regular routine. Here's what's caught my eye around the web this week:

• I'm thinking more and more about goats these days. There's a goat rescue not far from here; I plan on volunteering with them to get some more experience with the animals so I can see if they'd be a good fit for us at some point. 
• This "ice cream" looks fantastic. I'm going to have to make some ice and dig out my machine. 
• And while I'm thinking about frozen desserts- does any one else make this? We always have frozen bananas on hand- well, we used to anyway. I seem to run out now... It's great plain, but I like to add a little nutella for grins. 
• My chives need a haircut, so I'm going to make up a batch of this vinegar. Beautiful!
• I've been spending a lot more time with my camera set to things other than "auto" lately. This article has been very helpful!

That's all, for now. What have you been reading online this week?

Grit Post

I wish this was my fence. In Montana, 2011

The new post has been submitted to GRIT and should be live later today, so stay tuned!

Today's topic is the Toby Hemenway presentation from the fair. Specifically, how the concepts of Permaculture can be applied to daily food choices - and how it's not just a gardening plan, necessarily.

I'll bump it out via Facebook once I see that it's up. Until then- here's a bit of Montana, from one of our trips a few years ago, for you to enjoy.

We Have A Winner!

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a pleasant weekend.

I'm excited to announce the winner of Acorn and Thistle's first ever giveaway: Madeline Edwards!
Congratulations, Madeline! Please email me or send me a private message on Facebook with the address you'd like me to send your prize to. A big Thank You to everyone who participated, as well- I received a bunch of really good questions, and I'm looking forward to answering them all, as best I can.

Madeline's question was "What do you do with the parts of the rabbits that you don't process into food, since you can't compost them?"

For me, it's important that I use as much of the animal as I possibly can. At this point in time, all that's left when I finish processing are the inedible guts, feet and heads. Those go out to the farthest part of our property and get buried a couple of feet down so as not to attract any attention from dogs or other animals. So, in that regard, they do get composted, just not in my main garden pile.

We keep the pelts and dry them. I'd like to learn more about tanning, and it's on my list of things to work on. I'm not overly keen on some of the chemicals that get used though, so I'm still researching different methods to see what will work. (The idea of brain tanning, which is a common way to treat small animal hides, freaks me out. Not so much the idea of using the brain- it's the getting it out that makes me uncomfortable.)
Anyway... for now, I tack them to a pallet and let them air dry for a day or so, and then salt them heavily. I was reading about bark tanning recently, so the batch I have drying now are coated with a paste of salt and hemlock/red alder bark "tea".  This is my first try with that, so we'll see how it goes.

I pull the livers, kidneys and hearts out and cook them up for the dogs. I know there are folks out there who love them- apparently rabbit liver is great, if you like liver... but I'm not a huge fan. I keep a bag in the freezer that I put veggie scraps in- carrot ends, celery trimmings, onion bits... that sort of thing - for making stock. So, I put the organs in my crock pot with the veggie scraps and covered them with water, then let them simmer overnight. I chopped up the meat with my food processor, and the dogs get a little of that with their dry food. The stock was strained, and will be used as "gravy" for their dry dinners as well as for making some dog biscuits.

And that's about it, for us. There may be other uses out there, that I'm either not aware of or ready to try, but to me, it feels like very little gets wasted. We'll get several meals out of one rabbit, as will our dogs. And the trees in the "back 40" also benefit from a little extra microbial action while the last little bits break down.

Does anyone else have anything to add? I'd be curious to hear if there are any other uses for the parts we don't keep.