Introductions! Our homestead is growing!

Meet Finn.

  Back in June my daughter asked for a bunny for her birthday. We checked marketplace ads and inquired about a few and then ended up stopping by a Rural King one afternoon and coming home with this little guy. His name is Finn and he's as sweet as can be.

We have him as an indoor bunny, but he loves to explore outside.  i'd like to eventually make him a bunny run, so he can spend time outside during the day unsupervised.  i hate seeing bunnies in tiny little hutches. i want a nice grass enclosure for him.

During the day i let him out to get a bit of exercise. We have him litter box trained, so he can run about exploring the livingroom and it's other inhabitants. 

The other kitties watch him from upstairs, but piggy (Banjo)  doesn't seem to mind him at all. 

Just a few weeks ago we were talking about how our dogs are getting older. Both are almost 10 years old, and haven't been doing their job lately.  The deer walk right through the yard to eat peaches and have even gotten into my garden this year.  The dogs spend all day sleeping on the deck and don't even wake up when the deer is 20 feet in front of them.  When mentioning it to the kids, both kids said they wanted a German Shepard. Kenan and i both wanted a working dog like a border collie or Australian Shepard.

Literally the day after our discussion, i saw a post come through my facebook feed, someone local was giving away free puppies. The father is Pure bred German Shepard and the mother is purebred Australian Shepard.  Pretty much exactly what we were looking for.  i sent the link to Kenan with the message 'here's your puppy. lol. '  i was really kind of joking. i didn't expect him to contact the folks, but it really was exactly what we wanted.  So Kenan sent them a message, and it turns out the folks giving away the puppies are practically neighbors. The girl was on her way to Willis to give them away to some other folks that were interested, but offered to stop by here and give us first pick. 

So just like that, a day after mentioning we would need to get a new dog...we had a brand new puppy. My daughter picked out the only boy from the litter. After several days of not agreeing on a name, we (kenan and i) decided to call him Jasper. 

He's growing super fast. He was born on the 4th of July, so he's a little over 3 months old and is almost the same size as my other two dogs.  He's going to be a big boy. He's really smart and already knows how to sit on command.  He has a great Phoenix marking on his chest and makes a great hiking buddy. We are excited to have him join our homestead. 

Our apiary is also growing! When we started last year we began with 4 hives, and ended the year with 8.  We were able to over winter them all successfully and started this year with all 8. We are now up to 17 and will be going into the winter with 17 colonies!   They have done way better than we expected and are excited to see what next year brings!