Kill the Rabbit, Kill the Rabbit

2/29/08 - 6th Day - After Breakfast. Preparation of the Sabbath. Just a short post this morning before I continue work on Part 10 of the Off-Grid Living for Agrarians series. Yesterday I taught Tracy how to butcher her first meat rabbit. We had planned on it for about a week, and we decided to do it on Thursday, then, in the morning, she came to tell me that she had just had 7 more kits born. This brings to 10 the number of fairly new kits she has, and I think she has somewhere around 15 rabbits now total. Well, when the rabbits start to multiply like that it is time to either start selling them, or start butchering them. The rabbit we butchered was not one of those we had raised. The Sustaire's had an old buck that wasn't "doing his job" so we gave them one of our good productive males for the old buck so that they could start their production. This is the rabbit who would serve in our butchering class. Mary Gurau came over and we butchered up "Mr. Buffalo" as he was called. In general, the rabbit is easier to kill and clean than a chicken, though someone who is good at any one of them can do it pretty fast. I had never killed and cleaned a commercial meat rabbit, so it was a new deal for me. The skin was pretty tough and it is hard to do any fine knife work when the fur is so thick, but we finally got it done. I think we are going to prepare it today - and I haven't figured out which way to cook it yet. I've cooked and eaten rabbit a lot of different ways, but this is the first commercial meat rabbit we have cooked, so it will be an adventure.

Finally it seems some moisture is moving in from the gulf, so we might get some rain before Monday. It has been very dry and we have had high winds adding to the fire danger.

Well, I have to get to work. Y'all check back in a few hours for Part 10!

Michael