Goat Milk, Kayaks & Rabbit Math Dreams!

Well, here we are again. Somehow another two weeks have flown by, and we’re already halfway through July.

I swear summer runs on a completely different clock than the rest of the year. During the winter, it feels like time slows right down, but as soon as the gardens are growing, the goats are milking, and there’s more daylight than hours to get everything done, the weeks disappear before we know it.

We’ve been keeping busy—as usual. Between the garden, preserving food, taking care of the animals, and trying to keep up with all the little projects around the homestead, there’s certainly been no shortage of things to do. Looking back through my camera roll, I’d almost forgotten just how much we’ve packed into the last couple of weeks.

So, grab your favourite drink, settle in, and let’s catch up on what’s been happening here on the Funny Farm.

Canada Day started pretty much the way every day does around here—with chores. We spent the morning taking care of all the animals, and then quite a bit of time out in the garden. It turns out that when you build a whole bunch of garden beds, you also sign yourself up for a whole bunch of weeding.

By early afternoon, we packed the truck with our kayaks, life jackets, paddles, and everything else we needed, then headed into Fredericton. The plan was to spend the afternoon kayaking before sticking around town to watch the Canada Day fireworks over the Saint John River that evening.

It turned out to be one of those days where everything just worked out.

It was a little windy, but not enough to make paddling difficult. Even though it’s a huge river with a noticeable current, it was very manageable. We could paddle upstream without feeling like we were fighting the river the whole time.

One of my favourite parts was all the wildlife. We also found a small feeder river branching off from the main river where the water was calm and peaceful. We paddled our way up it until we found a little gravel beach, pulled the kayaks ashore, and went for a quick swim to cool off. It was a hot, sunny day, so the cold water felt amazing.

After our swim, we explored a little farther before heading back. We paddled around both the pedestrian bridge and one of the traffic bridges farther upstream before turning around and letting the current help us back toward where we had launched.

All in all, we spent just under three hours on the water, and it was a fantastic afternoon.

Our friends Stefan and Amelie joined us, and Addy had also connected with someone through a local Facebook kayaking group. Her name was Shannon, and it was great getting to meet her. We had a wonderful group, beautiful weather, and an excellent way to celebrate Canada Day.

After we finished kayaking, we headed over to Picaroons for some food and a couple of drinks while we waited for the fireworks. They had a live folk band playing—very Canadian and very fitting for Canada Day—and they were absolutely hilarious. The music was great, there was lots of joking around between songs, and we laughed for most of the evening.

The fireworks didn’t start until 10:45 that night, and I have to say, Fredericton put on a fantastic show. It lasted much longer than I expected, and it was well worth staying for.

The only downside to the entire day was our brilliant parking decision.

We had parked right downtown near the marina and the boat launch, thinking it would be the perfect spot. It was… until everyone else who had watched the fireworks tried to leave at exactly the same time.

It took us a good forty minutes just to get out of the parking lot.

By the time we finally made it home, it was around one o’clock in the morning. We were absolutely exhausted, but it was one of those days where you don’t even mind. From kayaking and swimming to live music, good friends, great food, and fireworks, it was a pretty epic way to celebrate Canada Day.

I was lucky enough to take a few vacation days at the beginning of the month, and honestly, they couldn’t have come at a better time. Canada Day gave me the statutory holiday off from work, and I decided to tack on the Thursday and Friday afterward as vacation days. I work for an auto finance company, so having a few extra days at home meant I could finally tackle some of those homestead jobs that had quietly been piling up.

The first major project?

The eggs.

Apparently, when you have chickens, ducks, turkeys, and now quail, it’s surprisingly easy for eggs to accumulate faster than you can use them. Before we knew it, we had cartons and bowls of eggs sitting on the counter, and I honestly couldn’t remember which ones were the freshest anymore.

So I spent part of my vacation giving every single egg a wash before doing the good old float test. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s pretty simple. Fresh eggs sink, while older eggs that have gone bad float because the air pocket inside gets larger over time.

Unfortunately, quite a few of ours floated.

The bright side?

Our compost pile got a healthy dose of calcium.

I like to think next year’s garden will appreciate the donation.

Once I’d sorted through everything, I repacked all the good eggs into clean cartons and reorganized them. We’re making a concerted effort to stay on top of the eggs for the rest of the year.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

After all, we’re collecting chicken eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs, and now quail eggs every single day. It’s a wonderful problem to have… as long as we remember to eat them.

Because I had Friday off, I also made time for something a little less chore-related and booked a pedicure appointment with a friend. We drove into Fredericton and went to Freddy Nails on Main Street.

It was such a relaxing experience. We sat in wonderful massage chairs while getting our pedicures, and I was fully enjoying myself until I realized I kept slowly sliding down in the chair. At one point, I tried to scoot myself back up so I could press my back against the massage rollers properly, and unfortunately my toe bumped into my technician’s elbow.

Of course, I managed to wreck the fresh polish on one of my toenails.

He was very kind and told me not to worry. He didn’t speak much English, but he fixed the blemish perfectly, and by the time he was done, you couldn’t even tell anything had happened.

Overall, it was a great experience and a very relaxing way to spend part of my day off. If you’re ever in the Fredericton area and looking for a nail salon, I would definitely recommend Freddy Nails.

Saturday was one of our favourite local events of the year—Beer on the Bridge.

The first time we ever heard that name, we honestly thought it meant a bunch of people standing around on a bridge drinking beer they picked up from the liquor store.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

In Fredericton, there’s a pedestrian-only bridge that crosses the Saint John River, and every year one of the local Rotary Clubs shuts it down and transforms it into an incredible tasting event. Breweries, cideries, distilleries, and even a local vineyard set up booths all the way across the bridge. There are live bands playing throughout the event, food vendors selling snacks like giant pretzels, samosas, and popcorn, and hundreds of people wandering from booth to booth enjoying the afternoon.

When you buy your ticket, you’re given a small tasting glass that you use to sample drinks from all of the vendors. I never actually counted, but there must have been somewhere between thirty and forty different vendors this year.

By the time you make it to the far end of the bridge, things start to get a little… cheerful.

It’s a really well-run event, and it’s such a unique way to showcase so many of New Brunswick’s local breweries, cideries, distilleries, and wineries in one place.

The weather couldn’t have been better this year, and we had another fantastic time. Our friends Al and Constance joined us again, which made the afternoon even more enjoyable.

This was our second year attending, and I can honestly say I think it’s becoming one of our favourite summer traditions.

Like always, the weekdays when both Addy and I are working full-time seem to disappear in the blink of an eye. Most of them are the usual routine of chores, work, chores again, dinner, and bed. But one thing definitely stood out this time.

Our milking machine died.

Well… more specifically, the power adapter died.

I’m still not entirely sure what happened. Every morning I bring the milking basket into the house, process the milk, rinse everything out, and usually leave the basket by the sink while I rush upstairs to log in for work. I don’t really look at it again until the next morning.

One morning last week, I picked up the basket and found the bottom full of water.

Somehow, I’m guessing one of the cats had a case of the zoomies overnight because one of the cleaning bottles had also been knocked over. I had forgotten to empty the teat wash container, so it had spilled into the basket, and unfortunately the power adapter for the milking machine had been sitting in the bottom of it.

Completely submerged.

Needless to say…

Rest in peace, little power adapter.

It was done.

That meant from Wednesday through Sunday, I was back to milking completely by hand.

Honestly, it had been quite a while since I’d hand milked all of the goats from start to finish, but you do what you have to do. Milking machine or not, those girls still need to be milked every morning.

So I grabbed the stainless steel milk pail and a one-litre jar and got to work.

By the end of the week, I’d actually gotten pretty good at it again. My hands, on the other hand, had some opinions.

One thing I did discover is that the “seven-litre” pail we have definitely does not hold seven litres. I call that complete nonsense. Once it gets to somewhere around five and a half litres, the milk starts getting awfully close to overflowing because the float valve that’s supposed to stop it doesn’t really do its job.

After a few days of hand milking, I finally decided to bite the bullet and order a new machine.

The larger 12-litre model wasn’t expected to arrive until the middle of August, and I really didn’t want to hand milk for another month. Instead, I compromised and ordered the smaller three-litre pulsating milking machine.

I’m so glad I did.

Unlike my old machine, this one actually pulses the suction, much more like a kid nursing naturally. The old machine was constant suction, so I always made a point of breaking the vacuum every couple of minutes because I worried it wasn’t very comfortable for the goats.

Monday morning was my first chance to use the new machine.

It was amazing.

Even better, the three-litre unit fits perfectly onto my larger stainless steel milk pail, so I ended up saving some money while still getting the capacity I wanted. That’s definitely a win in my books.

I also ordered a spare power adapter this time. After this little adventure, I’ve learned it’s worth having a backup. Even though I proved to myself that I can still hand milk when I need to, it’s nice knowing that if something ever happens again—or if someone is farm-sitting for us—we’ll have a little bit of built-in insurance.

Sometimes the homestead decides you need to relearn an old skill… and then rewards you with an upgrade afterward.

One of the highlights in the garden over the last couple of weeks was our broccoli. It did really well! The heads were a little smaller than what you’d typically find at the grocery store, but honestly, we didn’t mind at all because we actually prefer broccolini-style florets anyway. It was our first decent broccoli harvest, and we were pretty excited to finally be bringing it into the kitchen.

As luck would have it, the very same day we harvested our own broccoli, Addy was told to flip the broccoli bed at the farm.

So… you guessed it.

He brought home even more broccoli.

Looks like broccoli was the bonus work of the week!

We washed everything, and then I blanched about a third of it before vacuum sealing it for the freezer. Unfortunately, our food saver doesn’t seem to like sealing bags with damp food inside. No matter how careful I am, the moisture seems to keep the bags from sealing properly.

In the end, we decided to leave about two-thirds of the broccoli raw before vacuum sealing it. It’ll be a bit of an experiment. If the texture holds up after thawing, great! If not, we’ll use it in soups, casseroles, or any recipe where softer broccoli works just fine.

That’s one of the fun parts of homesteading—we’re always learning what works best, one harvest at a time.

One of the bigger projects we’ve started is our new rabbit colony setup. I’m not entirely sure what to call it yet—a rabbit colony, rabbit run, rabbitry, or maybe just a really fancy rabbit enclosure—but whatever the name, we’re pretty excited about it.

We started with a large metal-framed chicken run that we bought from Vevor. It came with all the pieces that click together, a roll of PVC-coated chicken wire, what felt like about 400 zip ties, and a white tarp for the roof.

That might be perfect for chickens, but we’re planning to modify it quite a bit to make it safe for rabbits.

The first step was getting the frame together and the tarp installed, and we’ve already started adding some of the wire. The plan is to line the entire ground with wire to prevent digging predators from getting in—or rabbits from getting out. On top of that we’ll likely add dirt and bedding, although we’re still figuring out exactly what combination will work best.

Around the bottom edge, Addy is adding wood boards and hardware cloth to reinforce everything, and we’re also planning to cover the outside with heavier welded wire for extra predator protection. The tarp will work for now, but eventually we’d like to replace it with a more permanent roof.

Inside, we’re hoping to make it feel a little more natural for the rabbits. Since our property is so rocky, digging real burrows isn’t really an option, so we’re planning to use large totes as artificial burrows and build the ground up around them. We’ll also add hay feeders, watering stations, feeding areas, and hopefully a few fun features like a tunnel, different elevations, and maybe even a little wooden platform with a ramp for them to explore.

The biggest question we’re still researching is how to manage the buck.

Some rabbit keepers leave the buck in with the does all the time and say everything works itself out naturally. Others recommend keeping the buck in a separate enclosure within the colony and only letting him visit when you actually want breedings to happen.

We’re still learning, so if you have experience with rabbit colonies, I’d genuinely love to hear what has worked for you.

At this point, the frame is up, the tarp is on, and a good portion of the wire is finished. There’s still plenty left to do before anyone moves in, but it’s finally starting to look like a real project instead of just an idea.

I’m really hopeful this is going to be the solution we’ve been looking for. As anyone who’s been following the blog knows, we’ve had more than our fair share of challenges getting our rabbits to, well… breed like rabbits.

Here’s hoping a colony setup is exactly what they needed.

And that wraps up another couple of busy weeks here on the Funny Farm. Looking back, it’s amazing how much can happen in such a short amount of time. Between celebrating Canada Day on the water, tackling some long-overdue homestead projects during my vacation, upgrading our milking setup, making progress on the new rabbit colony, and keeping up with the never-ending chores that come with this lifestyle, we’ve certainly stayed busy.

As always, thank you so much for making it all the way to the bottom. It truly means the world to us that you take the time to follow along with our adventures, celebrate the successes, laugh with us when things don’t quite go according to plan, and continue cheering us on as we learn more every season.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Have you ever tried raising rabbits in a colony setup? Or, if you’re a gardener, what’s your biggest success in the garden so far this summer?

Until next time, take time to enjoy the little moments, don’t be afraid to tackle a new project, and remember that even the busiest days make for the best stories. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks with another update from the Funny Farm!

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