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This Rabbit Hutch Kills Fascists
This Rabbit Hutch Kills Fascists
Early this morning before heading off to work, I was dragging our rabbit tractor with 10 juvenile bunnies eight feet into new grass and was reminded of an exchange I had on Zero Hedge several days earlier.
Well, when it's the only thing you can afford - then of course you are going to buy it.
Consumers WANT to make better choices...
This is such horseshit. Stop kidding yourself.
Consumers only real choice is to consume MOAR or MOARER.
Consumer's give up any real power to choose when they become consumers.
Do my cattle, rabbits, and chickens get to choose what they want to eat? No.
The producers get to choose to feed you whatever is most profitable.
Don't be a consumer, be a producer, if you really and truly do, "...WANT to make better choices."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-21/are-amercians-turning-their-bul...
Then, I thought about Warren Buffet’s recent acquisition of Heinz and the fact that Coca Cola, Wal-Mart, ADM (Supermarket to the World), Kraft Foods, John Deere, and Costco are also major holdings of Berkshire Hathaway. I remembered how I felt when I discovered that our elected representatives have made it illegal for anyone other than the government to test for Mad Cow Disease in the United States. I remembered reading Ron Paul’s letter regarding raw milk producers being raided. One of the characteristics of a fascist nation came to mind:
Then a funny idea occurred to me. Woody Guthrie often performed with the phrase, “This Machine Kills Fascists,” inscribed on his guitar.
I considered that this machine, my rabbit tractor, also kills fascists in the exact same way, and so do my handmade rabbit hutch, mobile chicken house, garden, and fruit trees.
Is raising some rabbits or chickens in your backyard or on your apartment’s rooftop really going to change the world? I don’t know. No single drop of water ever believes it is responsible for the flood. I do know that it is incredibly satisfying to take action. What is the saying? Knowledge without action is insanity.
Raising rabbits is easy, they breed like rabbits, and it is especially fun and rewarding if you have children. Rabbits are probably the best animal to learn to butcher, and the meat is delicious and healthy. Here are a couple of excellent resources if you want to be a raindrop:
Bass Equipment Company
http://www.bassequipment.com/default.aspx
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition
Carla Emery, $ 19.77
Especially if one does not live on a farm, it is a good thing to know the how, when, what, and where of providing for ourselves.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-01-24/will-you-pay-kid-read-12...
Finally, here are some of our results to help motivate you.
Rabbit cooked in cream, white wine, and rosemary with potato galettes.
Rabbit cooked in vinegar with whipped parsnips.
Roasted rabbit loin with home-grown haricots verts and wild rice.
The rabbit hutch built by me and the little horsemen.
What a fun way for kids to learn multiplication.
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Along the same theme, a whitetail deer yields about 45-50% of body weight in usable meat. At 150 pounds, a large doe yields 70 pounds of meat. At Walmart hamburger prices, that is over $200 worth of meat.
Venison is great, but you have to watch what they eat. Too much GMO corn, soy, and Roundup in some areas leads to a tainted deer. Squirrel is great too, and you can trap them like crazy.
"Consumers only real choice is to consume MOAR or MOARER.
Consumer's give up any real power to choose when they become consumers."
Very good point HH. The illusion of choice is essential in maintaining a placated populace. A "consumer" in my opinion, is an unthinking, mesmerized, dronelike robot who only responds to Bernaysian stimuli.
The word, "consumer" is very dehumanizing. It denotes ingurgitation and destruction.
You don't have to switch from consumer to producer. You could learn how to cook instead.
That only gets you part way, but is a good start.
The Way to Cook
Julia Child, $ 26.00
This is the most aptly titled book on this list. Huge benefits may be reaped from a teenager reading it before moving away from home.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-01-24/will-you-pay-kid-read-12...
Also The Joy of Cooking. The older the edition the better. I have a mid sixties one. Be careful though I have had two earlier editions disappear on me. Sort of like Steal This Book. Only without the commie author.
Hedge, how do your youngsters do on grass? Joel Salitin does something similiar, but people are mixed about feeding grass to rabbits, or raising them on the ground.
lol
So, do they feed them fishfood in an aquarium?
No problems. Keep moving the hutch every day or two so that they never get the idea to dig out.
People (Many books people would read) worry about snuffles, etc, when they are on the ground, or they get sick from greens/forgage. Mine have done well, but if you don't have good stock, you might have these issues. People feed them pellets only in a hanging cage......
Exaxtly. Fewer and fewer poorer Americans have any real cooking or food skills these days and this is entirely the government’s fault. Just a few decades ago people with very limited food budgets could stretch an animal carcass or bulk staple foodstuffs a long, long way. Now they just buy more expensive, processed and prepared crap with their EBT cards.
Even with all the recent shenanigans food in America is ridiculously cheap on a historical basis. It really doesn’t cost that much to feed a family well with things like rice, beans, cheaper cuts of meat and even frozen or fresh vegetables. But you have to know what you’re doing and put some effort into it.
These days practically the only people from the lower end of the socio-economic scale you see buying stuff like this in the supermarket are Hispanic immigrants.
Woody wrote some great music and I know Dylan loved him but I think the back of his guitar says This Machine Helps Socialists. :)
it's only a matter of time before these activities are brought under regulatory control with the FDA or other Federal agency getting involved to prevent the people from growing their own food. The monopolists will make certain that this is done before it reaches any kind of critical mass. I hope I'm wrong.
Dead or Alive it's a hard road...
Woody Guthrie ~ All You Fascists Bound To Losehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS7OSQ
"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender....."
Pete Seeger's long neck 5 string banjo
guess he couldn't let Woody get the last word...
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h_BnA5Nv2o...'s%2Bbanjo%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pete+seeger's+banjo&usg=__od8Ov3aiizL_ZkEx9oUAAHQa6Ik=&docid=3mY9pkBKnog8AM&sa=X&ei=h5svUYThF4vYigKbzoHYDQ&ved=0CFkQ9QEwBQ&dur=153
Suggest folks who want to raise rabbits also find a source of fat. Rabbits have little to no fat, and you don't have time to plant walnuts. Chickens have fat.
Nice build on the hutch.
while i've raised both chicks and bunnies, i'd say pound-for-pound goats are easiest to maintain. Given a shack, good fence and a water source, they do the rest. We keep a guardian-type dog to protect them (and us) from predators during the night.
My wife and I recently picked up about 20 lbs of fat from a processed hog from our local processor, for free.
What kind of fencing do you use to contain your goats? I've thought about goats for clearing, but the cost of fencing and maintaining the goats seems to be much greater than running my tractor (w/field mower).
Dogs rule! I've got a Mastiff/Lab mix, a "runt" at only 80 lbs. She's been trained to chase away aerial predators from our fowl's run. Had had zero losses until she blew out one of her knees; in a matter of a couple of weeks now we've lost a couple fowl.
I use 4' welded-wire mesh stapled to trees, making sure that the fence is between the tree and the goats. They're damn good climbers. In an open area a cinder block and rope works fine. We have intermittent springs and put out half buried 5-gallon buckets when it's dry.
I've had goats without fencing, but one got aced by a quad and another would wander to the neighbors and eat the guy's cigarettes that he left on his lawn chair.
We have an Asian shepherd, a real killer, but he's more aloof than the house dogs, as he's bonded with the goats rather than people. He won't even let the other dogs near them.
woodie guthrie; was a woody wood pecker! He kept pecking away at establishment truths.
How the meaning of words change in the popular mindest; not saying its for the better! ...
Woodie, pecker, and truths!
Amen. Build a system that gets you off the grid. Even if only in a small way. The simplest system may be a vegetable garden. Or solar panels. Learn productive skills. Not only do these things "kill fascists", but they protect America i.e. "the people".
Outside of the ag business we also keep goats and chickens at our private property. Also enjoy HH's posts even though the reality is that there isn't enough arable land or inputs for 7+ billion people to sustain such endeavors. One advantage to being fairly isolated in a rather foreboding environment (like HH is in Texas).
Every little bit counts. One less FRN in the banksters pockets.
Fuck you bernanke.
2 words.....perma...culture
look it up ....it is on the internet (and actually looks promising), I like it because it makes lazyness and thrift virtues. No tilling, no fertilizer, no pesticides and you use vertical and horizontal spaces
just add (a little) water
as one of the local permie preachers/practicioners around here, i wish i could say it was that simple, but it's not. one must come to grips with the fact that most of the soils that we can use are depleted of minerals. until that problem is addressed by each and every gardener/farmer/permie what have you, we're just delaying the inevitable.
someone mentioned steve solomon below, that's an excellent start.
add some rock dust & sea salt to that water and we might be getting somewhere.
Are you familiar with Azomite? It is a product mined in Utah with 60+ minerals, and it is supposed to aid in the rejuvenation of soils. I got a few hudred pounds and will try it this season, but I'm wondering if you know about it.
hell yeah. gotta love the volcanic rock. you're a blessed boot if you got your gloves on a few hundred pounds. it's just crazy expensive around these parts. i use it in microdoses for container plants like wheatgrass.
be very careful not to overdose your soil all at once though or your seedlings will do a john belushi at the chateau marmont. a little goes a long way. that stuff takes time for the soil critters to digest it. you should it throw a little down now before it warms up. and if you got a compost pile, run some through there and mulch with the compost in a couple of months. if you got chickens, sprinkle some around and let em shit it out.
LoP talks all the time about oxidation levels, this is a key point to understand. nature will do it for ya in proper amounts, but you gotta be patient.
do it right though, and in the year after next, you'll have superfood.
Excellent! Thank you! I got mine at www.kelp4less.com and they shipped it in a bunch of USPS priority mail boxes; $1.50 a pound delivered to NJ. The post office people got a kick out of me. I ordered the granular, not powder, type so I'm hoping that takes care of any shock, and I was going to brave the mud and spread this weekend.
that kelp4less site is a veritable gold mine, cork. you just made my season. cheers mate.
If water is truly the only thing you are adding to the system, then it will be the only thing you can extract. Can I interest you in a bridge I have for sale?
I believe Permaculture is the future also. I would add another new technology to it, however- Nutrient Dense Growing(Beyond Organic). One possible place to start on that subject is: "the intelligent gardener" by Steve Solomon.
In any case, you do not get proteins (reduced nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, oxygen), nucleic acids (reduced nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, oxygen), fat (reduced carbon and oxygen), and carbohydrates (carbon and oxygen) out of a system without putting these same elements (in the correct oxidation state) back in. Moreover, in order to sustain growth in of a number of individuals or simply sustain them period, a certain amount of mass must be provided by the system every single day. Sure, people can return to subsistence farming (all this is folks), but there are very finite limits and there is no free lunch. Show me the math that demonstrates the biological cycles for nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc. can support X number of people without serious excelleration by energy-dependent processes such as Haber Bosch. the best data I have seen came out of MIT and Cal Tech. Both groups estimated around 14 billion, plus or minus a few billion, and living standards would definitely change. So, well within our last doubling.
Everything is in balance, we cannot convert all the organic biomass into human beings or products for human beings to consume without destroying organisms essential to these cycles and life (at least in it's present form). I think we are on the same page, but the laws of Nature and Physics will force our hand either way. The planet will be just fine.
LoP, been thinking a lot about what you've been writing on this topic. without a dietary change (quality over quantity) on a mass scale, along with a massive increase in the nutrient density of each calorie that we consume, i'm afraid you are 100% correct.
this is mayhaps where nuts, berries, "medicinals", and mushrooms come into the equation. will it be enough? impossible to say at this point, but it's worth the effort, yes?
Permaculture is powerful but not enough to feed 7 billion.
not yet anyway
A couple months ago, someone here at ZH mentioned hugelkultur. I googled and read about it some, and it, too, looks very promising.
permies.com is well worth a visit. Love the Rocket Mass Heater!
Just don't drink raw unpasteurized milk with your meal lest the State Police come after you.
CW
Rabbit milk?
In Virginia, most of the arrests/harassment have been over goat cheese.
I couldn't make that up. WTF?
Leading by example. Well done, Hedgeless!
Great post Horseman, I am in the process of doing the same I moved from a regular suburban house to a 2 acre mini ranch. I have planted a garden, fruit trees am raising chickens and have too many wild rabbits. This has been great for my stress and great for my kids health as well. Solar coming soon then my well as water is a big ticket item here in socal....keep up the great posts.....
How does one kill a rabbit? I fear that I'm too much of a pussy to do so. I think they are the cutest.
A .22 or a pellet gun works great....so do my dog and cat!!! good hunting
You grab them by the neck and twist real hard, or you can cut their throats but that is not as fun!
With chickens, cutting their throats (well, decapitation using a knife) is the easiest and simplest method I have found, unless one is very proficient with an ax. They generally don't even put up much of a struggle while being "put into position" either. But then, I suspect that chickens are not as smart as rabbits.
Don't cut the nerve, it makes them tough. For chickens, stick them in a killing cone, insert a small knife into their mouth, push and twist. Cut just the artery in the neck under the jaw to let them bleed out.
Interesting info, hh --- I did not know that!
Alas, all the chickens which I have butchered have been old laying hens, which are inherently going to be tough regardless. I use them all for either stew or, more usually, soup, for which they are superb.
And incidentally, if you raise your own chickens, particuarly organically fed, do NOT neglect to save their fat (lots of it in the body cavity of older hens), which can easily be rendered and is a fantastic flavor enhancer for every kind of chicken dish, and many other foods as well. It is nutritionally closer to olive oil than beef or pork fat (as being liquid at room temperature, unlike beef or pork fat, would indicate), and easily preserved for long periods in the freezer. I consider home-rendered chicken fat, in fact, equally as valuable as the chicken meat itself.
That fat is THE thing for making a roux to thicken gravy.
Don't forget to use the feet in your broth. My poor daughter had her boyfriend over and was going to cook him an impressive meal. She opened the freezer and he saw my big bag of chicken feet and nearly passed out! Silly city boys!
Miffed;-)
.22 pistol.
I would have a tough time too. Maybe I'll just breed them wild in the neighborhood for future harvest. I'm sure I'll get the nerve to do it once the shelves are clear of rabbit hot pockets.