Happy Easter and April Fool's Day rolled into one!
Just when I thought my foot was healed, I found out it's not the hard way. It's been a couple of weeks that my healing broken bones in my foot has virtually been pain free. What with the new AFO and rocker sole on my affected foot's shoe, I thought I was out of the woods. I've actually been pretty good about staying off of it. Even though it has felt better.
As it happens too often on the homestead, we had a calamity that took both of us to fix. A couple of the cattle panels that make up the roof of our rabbitry slipped their shelf. The brackets we had screwed in to hold it in place came loose. Thus the roof caved in on one side. But worse than that, the five male rabbit cages were attached to the cattle panels suspending them off the ground.
I said that I've been good and I have. I've only been out to the rabbitry twice since I broke my foot. So now, I looked at the five cages with rabbits in them tilted to a 45 degree angle. Those poor rabbits! I helped Mel by supporting the cages as she released the cables. It took both of us to lower the 15' section of rabbit cages to the ground so that they were level once more. Then we began transferring the bucks to the outdoor hutches on the other side of the house ( a good 80' walk each way). We removed the remaining screws from the rail which held the cattle panels and reattached them. Finally we zip tied the panels to the pallets so this wouldn't happen again. By the time we finished all of this my foot was screaming at me. The old twisting knife pain was back. I don't know if I rebroke the original bones or new ones.
Now instead of brushing out these rabbits, we are going to have to shear them. We'll lose all that fiber. The reason- Broody(Gimpster) chicken and her sister had made their home on the tops of the cages. The hens like being on top of the cages because the roosters leave them alone. They just hop on the straw bales we house in the rabbitry for easy access to the top of the cages. Now chickens aren't toilet trained. They go wherever they feel like it. Not to mention their feed and watering bowls were all up there with them.
We placed metal oil pan drop trays on top of the cages to catch all of it. Well, when the roof gave way, all those trays dumped into the buck cages dousing them with all that poop and everything else. Of course being rabbits, they couldn't get it off no matter how hard they shook themselves. The shaking only cause that poop and straw to get embeded further in their hair. The five bucks look pitiful! We would wash them but their fur is so fine that it would mat against their skin. So we lose a little over four pounds of fiber. At the selling price of $8 an ounce... you figure out how much this additionally cost us.
We've just chocked it up homesteading. Things like this happen in life when you least expect it. Living post stroke doesn't make it any easier. Recovering from broken bones and Mel's trigger thumb which is now reinjured also, just makes for a bad turn of events. We're in bad shape for the fast approaching springtime busyness.
So once again, I'm off my feet again. I will be helping Mel rehang the rabbit cages after some minor adjustments and a good cleaning. The bucks will return to the rabbitry after we shear them. Mel with her little scissors and me with my mustache trimmer.
It's kind of amazing that while I don't play well with scissors, I can handle a battery powered trimmer with great accuracy. The bunnies do tend to move more with the vibration, but I can hold them pretty securely by pinning them down with my affected arm. Except for their fuzzy ears and their nails, I can shear a rabbit without cutting them once unlike Mel with her scissors. Mel is responsible for their ear and nail care for all the rabbits.
While we're at it, a good cleaning of the rabbitry is in order. I'll do what I can, but it's going to up to Mel for most of the grunt work this year. The deep bedding needs to be raked out and piled up to decompose further. But I can scatter flakes of fresh straw under the cages scooting my rollator around once it's cleared. If my broken foot has taught me anything, it's the need for a cleared and possibly a matted surface down the center of the rabbitry. I'm thinking the rubber mats like horse stalls have in them. They are 4x6 so four of them would work perfectly. We decided to expand the rabbitry another 4' long. We wanted a larger area for the rabbits to get sunshine and a "free-range" area that they would be protected in. The 3' section we currently have for this is taken up by food storage bins (plastic garbage cans). They hold the sprouting grains and seeds (corn, black oil sunflower seeds, barley, wheat and oats) and commercial, organic feed for both the chickens and the rabbits. We use the commercial feed as back up.
So while I'm still healing I'm taking it slow. In about a month, I'll be setting seed for the transplants to go into our straw bales. They've been "cooking" (decomposing) since October. Their centers should be full of composted material to feed the plants. Notice how I'm only mentioning things I can do while seated. I plan once again to be good. Hopefully, neither one of us have another setback in healing.
Nothing is impossible.
Kassity was in front of me on the deck. She excitedly hopped sideways, and back and forth. (Sort of like Scobby Doo), stopping now and then giving giving me a full face washing, started sideways hopping again. "Oh Momma Jo, that was funny! Do it again!"
It was later that night, my spasticity overrode both my oral baclofen and the pump, in spasticity control and pain relief. I was awoken at 2 AM in pain again 7/10. How easily I forgot this used to be my still functioning daily pain level. I added back the decreased baclofen. I managed a couple more hours of sleep. My functioning arm was stiff, with angry red streaks in a field of purple and black. Oh yeah! That's gonna smart for a few days. I had only just gotten rid of all the bruises that the hospital had done with IV attempts (6) and blood draws. Geez, I can't catch a break. Er, um, poor word choice.
