Not the relaxing morning I wanted!

Yesterday was a really productive day. We got the chicken brooder built, baby chicks bought, a lid on the turtle enclosure, and a new wifi thermostat I put in all by myself. I felt very accomplished until this morning.

Sundays we usually sleep in, especially when the kids are at  the other parents house. My goats are never thrilled when I finally get out to feed them around 10am instead of their usual 7am feeding. This morning I woke up with a feeling of dread. I had a dream that all 5 of our baby chicks we picked up were dying. I woke up threw, off the covers and ran to check on them.

Wait... Why is the house freezing. Oh shit! It is only 56 degrees in here. We have 3 cold blooded animals in our house as well as the 5 baby chicks that are suppose to be at 95 degrees with their lamp. THIS IS NOT GOOD! I check on the chicks, all are alive. I check on Cynder and turn on her light, not looking sooo good but I have to give her a little time after turning on her light. I will come back. Same for the turtles. Now what the hell did I break?

Every computer person knows try turning it off and back on again. Well that didn't work.

Time to face the elements and go under the house. It is 7 degrees, feels like -11. UGH! Get under the house and flip the furnace on and off. Smack my head on the light down there and break it. Pieces of glass are now in my hair. Great! And that didn't work either. I pass the goat pen and Daisy and Luigi remind me I have farm chores. I let the goats out and give them some hay. Grab the water bucket so I can give them some warm water from in the house. The bucket handle freezes to my palm. Wonderful! Goats are taken care of. Rabbits are going to have to wait till I fix the heat issue.

Time to call my ex-husband. He isn't going to be happy, it is too early for him on a Saturday but he works on HVAC systems and I am at a loss. After rubber ducking over the phone a bit I realize we have a two part heating system and I don't have the thermostat programmed as such. Fix that and go feel the vent again. SWEET! The air is semi warm. Hopefully it just needs some time to warm up. The thermostat is reading 2 degrees more than it was this morning. 59 degrees is still cold but it isn't as cold.

Now to finish the farm chores and go get some breakfast! Oh and some coffee. I have done all this without coffee.

Thermostat is wifi now so I can check to make sure it is continuing to climb. Awesome! On with the rest of my day.

Our Suburban Farm/Zoo - Part 1

I have a rabbit addiction. I admit it. Those cute fuzzy little things won my heart. Little did we know they were really the beginning of our suburban farm/zoo.

Catwoman walked in to the pet store one day and saw these fuzzy little Lionhead bunnies and fell in love. She gets this from me; sees a cute little baby critter and has to have it. She even takes it a step further and wants to be a vet one day. She isn't a huge fan of people but makes up for it with her love of animals. So she sees these bunnies and has to have one. She begs me for weeks. Said she will pay for it with her own money, etc.... etc... Finally after some talk with Batman we give in.

She saved her money all summer and bought her first bunny and Figaro comes home with us. I built him an awesome cage using these directions. I rarely do anything half way and always think if I do it myself I will save money (usually not the case). He lived in the sunroom that was off our apartment. Over time I too fell in love with him so we bought another one, Butterscotch. We made this cage into two cages. We started looking in to breeding them so we decided to start getting pedigree lionheads. We went to our first bunny show and brought home Black Knight. Yet another bunny in our sunroom. Unfortunately Black Knight got sick and passed away. This is always hard but one of the lessons I think it is important for Catwoman to learn if she is going to be a vet. Sometimes they get sick and some of them don't make it.

By this point we knew that we would be moving. It was only a matter of when. When we started looking for houses we made sure they allowed bunnies and having a shed with plenty of land was a plus. We were looking to rent at first. I passed up on a couple great houses because we couldn't have bunnies. Then one day after many places had fallen through we found a nice house with a little under an acre of land that was rent with option to buy. It was perfect for us and while I hadn't been thinking about buying I started to dream. There was a place to put a shed. I could add a fence. My mind started spinning at this point. I could have a small farm with chickens and our bunnies. We moved in shortly after.

Bunnies temporarily moved to the basement of our new house. We then brought home two more that were full bred pedigree lionheads, a male, Nerd and a female, Prim. About a month later we had our first litter of bunnies. One morning I went down to check on the rabbits and Figaro had pulled out half his hair. What the hell? Then the big ball of fur started moving. I peeked in and there were four little baby rabbits. Ahhh! Figaro wasn't a boy, she was a girl. Rabbits pull their hair to create a warm nest for their kits. She was renamed Figgy and continues to be our best momma bunny.


Shortly after we had a bad storm and the basement flooded. If it had gotten much higher we would have lost Butterscotch who was on the bottom part of the cage. After that the bunnies move to the laundry room. NOT IDEAL! Prim then had her first litter of kits. I started working hard on getting our shed ordered once the house started to smell like 11 bunnies.

 Finally our shed came! Thus Geeky Bunny Rabbitry was born as well the beginning of our farm.