The Koanga Institute (www.koanga.org.nz) sits within a fledgling village based on a community land trust model. Part of our purpose is to create a village self-reliant in food based on Weston Price principles (www.kotarevillage .co. nz). The Koanga Institute also hosts ten-week “Soil, Food and Health” internships, teaching students to grow nutrient-dense food and then how to prepare and cook food based on Weston Price principles, and more (www.koanga.org.nz).
The Koanga Institute has brought together New Zealandâs largest collection of New Zealand heritage vegetable seeds (over eight hundred varieties), and a heritage fruit tree and national berries collection of over four hundred varieties, collected over a thirty-year period from the northern bioregion, the warmest bioregion in New Zealand.
The Institute has also become a leading practitioner, researcher and teacher of the connections between soil health, plant and animal health and human health via our many workshops, internships and apprenticeships. We have valued the support and work of the Weston A. Price Foundation so much that supporting the Foundation forms part of our vision statement.
Like many others we have come to the wider realization that we need to address not just the ecology of our food that industrialization has compromised; we also have a broader need to address our âhuman ecologyâ by developing regenerative systems in ecology, economy and community. Only then will we continue to coevolve with nature, the source of our heritage seeds. Thus we are committed to developing a campus to continue our work, and an associated village to support the vision (see www.kotarevillage. org.nz).
Through this, we aim to ensure the longterm sustainability and regeneration of New Zealand’s bio-diversity heritage, and to contribute towards transformation in the wider community.
We are building many models here to inspire and support others, including our first two-hundred-square-meter urban model garden, designed to nourish a family of four, providing all the produce and animal products they need. This garden attracts lots of attention and is proving to be an inspiration only six months since it was established.
A WAPF-INSPIRED GARDEN
The goal of the garden is to produce not only fruits and vegetables, but also animal foods that will be sources of the nutrients we can’t get in plant foods, such as vitamin B12, D and K2, and in particular vitamin A and calcium.
Currently we regard the progress of our model as Stage One. It provides only around half the essential daily requirements for calcium and vitamin A. We are looking into how to add elements to this design to bring nutritional levels up to the daily requirements. However it is a process for gardeners to learn to house, manage and feed animals in a safe, healthy, happy way.
We imagine getting this level of nutrition from two hundred square meters will bring most familiesâ nourishment up significantly. Currently we are providing the animal-based nutrients with rabbits and chickens. We hope to add one or more of the following later:
⢠Pond or aquaponic system
⢠Pigeon loft
⢠One more doe in the rabbit system
⢠Raising meat chickens over summer on soldier fly larvae and comfrey
⢠Milking a sheep or goat
All of these decisions will be dependent on many things, but most gardens of this size could incorporate several of these elements, which could bring daily levels of vitamin A and calcium up to the recommended requirements.
It is also entirely possible that required levels could be reached using or buying resources from the environment:
⢠Seafood
⢠Raw milk cheese from small dairy farms, which we see emerging on land surrounding towns and cities.
We described our vision to our permacultue design students over four permaculture design courses, and each time the urban design group came up with different and wonderful ideas. Some groups suggested guinea pigs for vitamin A, vitamin D and traditional fat, others suggested snail farms, and one group thought a penned sheep or goat (being fed from the wider area), would be best for for providing calcium and vitamin A. We then did a final design based on the best of all of these ideas, one that we felt was practical, socially acceptable and possible.
MAXIMIZING NUTRIENTS
In this Stage One design we can provide fresh vegtables on a daily basis, year round. We can also provide fresh fruit on a daily basis, and within three years will be able to provide dried fruit out of season. We can provide olive oil and pickled olives for daily use, as well as nuts on a regular basis after about three to five years also.
The nuts, fruit and vegetables will go significantly towards maintaining the health of one family, but we still need vitamin A and more calcium than these items will provide.
We chose rabbits as being the most suitable animals to keep for meat, fat and specifically vitamin A (from their livers), and chickens as providers of high quality fat and vitamins A, D and K. It is the animals in indigenous peopleâs diets that provided the sacred foods containing the fat-soluble vitamins they needed to maintain their health.
Living near the sea allows a regular fishing trip or fish buying or bartering. It is possible in New Zealand to obtain fish heads and fish carcasses for quite a low cost that can add to what we have in the garden. Nutrient-dense foods like pig’s heads are also available at a very reasonable cost.
Key nutrients are obtained as follows:
⢠Vitamin A will come from rabbit livers, but also from occasional chicken livers.
⢠Recommended levels of vitamin D should be achieved by working in the sun and through eating egg yolks daily and chicken livers and fat occasionally.
⢠Calcium will come from rabbit bone broth, with more minor amounts from the carcasses of chickens that have finished laying, egg shells, small amounts from nutrient-dense fruit, vegetables and nuts, as well as significant calcium, other essential minerals and hormones from nettle tea and other weeds such as chickweed and cleavers.
⢠Traditional fats will come mostly from eggs, olives and nuts. Olives, almonds and hazelnuts are a feature in this design to maximize oils and minerals. Nutrient-dense vegetables contain high quality omega-6 and omega-3 oils. Animal fat will come from small animals such as rabbits who store their fat around internal organs rather than in the meat or under the skin, and chickens, who store their fat under the skin. We understand that the quality of feed an animal eats affects and determines the quality of nutrition the animal provides for us. Our rabbits eat no pellets or grains, only high-brix, nutrientdense greens and roughage. Our chickens also get foods from the garden, along with kitchen scraps.
MAXIMIZING PRODUCTION
The garden is designed for maximum production of highly nutritious vegetables, fruit and nuts all year round:
⢠We chose heritage varieties of vegetables and fruit to maximize nutrition.
⢠The fruit trees we have chosen provide a wide range of vitamins and minerals, with fruiting time year round and many products that can be stored. We chose heritage fruit species that are known to contain high levels of nutrition, such as berries and apples, goji and arguta (similar to kiwifruit).
⢠We practice remineralization of the soil.
⢠Potential vegetable garden area is maximized by keeping fruit trees vertical, and using all possible vertical and high horizontal spaces (whilst ensuring possible year-round fruit and nuts).
⢠Maximization of edges and vertical spaces with espaliered and cordoned trees (apples, pears) and vines (grapes, arguta) which allows for maximum length of ripening time, and maximum varieties for different end uses.
⢠Weâve chosen fruit trees and almond trees on dwarfing rootstocks to ensure they will not outgrow their spaces.
⢠For the garden we chose bio-intensively managed beds because this is the most efficient and sustainable strategy for maximum production of nutrient-dense food. (If you are not familiar with bio-intensive gardening or how to grow nutrient-dense food, I suggest you get a copy of our “Koanga Beginner Gardener” booklet and our “How To Grow Nutrient Dense Food” booklet.)
⢠We have chosen vegetables that crop heavily per square metre (see “Koanga Beginner Gardener” booklet).
⢠We have chosen a range of vegetables that will ensure there is something every day for a family to eat throughout the year, especially for making wholesome soups, stews, stir fries and salads!
⢠We include wicking beds on our concreted area. Crops that produce well in these beds include potatoes, peppers eggplants and herbs. (If you Google âwicking bedsâ youâll find many designs.)
⢠We have chosen to include some box gardens to grow other crops that suit these beds, to help maximize production/nutrition.
⢠Calcium will come from rabbit bone broth, with more minor amounts from the carcasses of chickens that have finished laying, egg shells, small amounts from nutrient-dense fruit, vegetables and nuts, as well as significant calcium, other essential minerals and hormones from nettle tea and other weeds such as chickweed and cleavers.
⢠Traditional fats will come mostly from eggs, olives and nuts. Olives, almonds and hazelnuts are a feature in this design to maximize oils and minerals. Nutrient-dense vegetables contain high quality omega-6 and omega-3 oils. Animal fat will come from small animals such as rabbits who store their fat around internal organs rather than in the meat or under the skin, and chickens, who store their fat under the skin. We understand that the quality of feed an animal eats affects and determines the quality of nutrition the animal provides for us. Our rabbits eat no pellets or grains, only high-brix, nutrientdense greens and roughage. Our chickens also get foods from the garden, along with kitchen scraps.
MAXIMIZING PRODUCTION
The garden is designed for maximum production of highly nutritious vegetables, fruit and nuts all year round:
⢠We chose heritage varieties of vegetables and fruit to maximize nutrition.
⢠The fruit trees we have chosen provide a wide range of vitamins and minerals, with fruiting time year round and many products that can be stored. We chose heritage fruit species that are known to contain high levels of nutrition, such as berries and apples, goji and arguta (similar to kiwifruit).
⢠We practice remineralization of the soil.
⢠Potential vegetable garden area is maximized by keeping fruit trees vertical, and using all possible vertical and high horizontal spaces (whilst ensuring possible year-round fruit and nuts).
⢠Maximization of edges and vertical spaces with espaliered and cordoned trees (apples, pears) and vines (grapes, arguta) which allows for maximum length of ripening time, and maximum varieties for different end uses.
⢠Weâve chosen fruit trees and almond trees on dwarfing rootstocks to ensure they will not outgrow their spaces.
⢠For the garden we chose bio-intensively managed beds because this is the most efficient and sustainable strategy for maximum production of nutrient-dense food. (If you are not familiar with bio-intensive gardening or how to grow nutrient-dense food, I suggest you get a copy of our “Koanga Beginner Gardener” booklet and our “How To Grow Nutrient Dense Food” booklet.)
⢠We have chosen vegetables that crop heavily per square metre (see “Koanga Beginner Gardener” booklet).
⢠We have chosen a range of vegetables that will ensure there is something every day for a family to eat throughout the year, especially for making wholesome soups, stews, stir fries and salads!
⢠We include wicking beds on our concreted area. Crops that produce well in these beds include potatoes, peppers eggplants and herbs. (If you Google âwicking bedsâ youâll find many designs.)
⢠We have chosen to include some box gardens to grow other crops that suit these beds, to help maximize production/nutrition.
⢠Weâll grow water chestnuts in a bath, kangkong (water spinach) and watercress in a plastic-lined box, kumara (sweet potatoes) in two boxes, and potatoes in two boxes.
⢠We will include a solar drier to maximize use of all crops. This will allow us to dry soaked nuts, excess fruit, and excess green vegetables (which can be powdered and added to soups and stews). Watch for a Koanga booklet on solar driers in summer 2014.
⢠Weâll have an ability to harvest and store any crops that may be in local parks, waste areas and road sides.
⢠We will include a small biochar maker to help remineralize the soil by adding biochar to the chicken scratch yard and compost.
⢠We’ll have a Top Bar beehive for honey, pollen and propolis.
⢠We’ll save a significant amount of seed. (See “The Garden Action Plan” in the “Koanga Beginner Gardener” booklet, which shows you which crops may be saved easily for seed.)
STRATEGIES & TECHNIQUES
Weâll use the following strategies and techniques to achieve production of our animals, fruits and vegetables in a regenerative way. We will have multiple systems in place to produce our own chicken and rabbit feed:
⢠Dynamic accumulators (comfrey, French sorrel, yarrow, chicory, alfalfa) planted everywhere, including the rabbit tractor path, which is excellent chicken, rabbit, and compost food.
⢠We will do a bit of foraging from nearby parks and neighbors, especially in the first years.
⢠Tree prunings from tagasaste (a small, leguminous tree native to New Zealand), legumes and apple trees for rabbit food and compost.
⢠Chicken scratch yard will be where the compost is made for the garden as a whole and all kitchen waste will go in there for the chickens to turn over. Adding sufficient carbon is important, so it remains aerobic and the chickens can actually turn the heap. The idea is that the chickens can actually live and lay well entirely by eating the decomposers (worms, fly larvae) in the compost, plus green material like comfrey.
⢠We will collect seaweed as it comes in during storms for the chicken scratch yard.
⢠We will check out our parks and vacant places around our area and see what possibilities there are for guerrilla planting to the advantage of residents. Nut trees, fruit trees and comfrey could be shared by groups of people. We’ll also look at trees and plants that produce biomass for compost making and feeding rabbits and potentially other animals. There may be specific trees that produce seeds that are good food for fattening pigeons, for example.
REMINERALIZATION
Our motto is remineralization for soil, plant, animal and human health! For the whole design to work we need to re-mineralize the soil, so as well as designing in mineral accumulators (as above) there will need to be a focus on finding local sources of minerals, recycling all nutrients, making and using biochar, and bringing in what is missing. A soil test will be done in the beginning and we will buy a refractometer to provide brix readings. It will be critical for anyone doing this to understand that if they have vegetables that arenât nutrient-dense, then feeding these vegetables to their rabbits will simply recycle the deficiencies. The goal must be to produce nutrient-dense plant material to feed themselves and the animals, so those minerals can be recycled through them!
⢠Recycle all bones through bone ash in the compost.
⢠Recycle all brown cardboard and clean white paper we can find through the compost or worm farms.
⢠Collect all leaves we can in autumn from the wider area, as well as neighborsâ hedge prunings, which may also be great for feeding rabbits.
⢠Create a neighborhood project to chip council prunings and either use as wood chips or make biochar. A group could get the council contract to do the local area tree maintenance.
⢠Harvest seaweed and salt water at any possible time (ideally monthly) to ensure the health of our soil, animals and family.
⢠Catch fish or barter for fish to increase our calcium, vitamin A and traditional fats and oils intake, and to have more bones to burn to return to the compost.
⢠Create a forest garden of five or six layers. A major part of the design to re-mineralize the soil and maintain soil fertility lies in designing the garden to have multiple layers as in a forest garden, such as deep rooting herbs, ground cover, legumes, herbaceous woody perennials, low growing shrubs, legumes to three meters, canopy fruit trees in full sun, as well as many mineral accumulators.
⢠We will invest with our neighbors in a chipper to harvest carbon from urban trees and parks to maintain the mulch for fruit trees and berries, compost carbon for the chickens and also use as extra feed for the rabbits.
PHASE TWO
We have lots of ideas to pursue once we see that Phase One is working well.
Once this garden is up and running there would be a lot of potential for selling seeds, seedlings and trees grown from cuttings and seed. Another idea is to build a greenhouse on the entire concrete area instead of using that for wicking beds and tubs with plants. It is also easy to see that anybody who is managing such a garden will soon become the teacher in their neighborhood! Another source of income or bartering potential! But first and foremost we will add more animal products to provide allimportant vitamin A and calcium.
KOANGA URBAN CHICKENS 101
We have one rooster and eight chickens of the Legbar breed. These are egg-producing chickens rather than meat chickens, although they do have good breast meat. We keep them in a deep-litter scratch yard of 2.4 x 2.8m (about 8 x 9 feet), with a fully covered roof and chicken mesh walls (mesh size to keep sparrows out is ideal). The pen holds 50cm deep aerobic carbon-compost materials, which the chickens constantly turn.
The pen has several roosts at varying heights over the compost, a solid south wall to protect the chickens from the wind, two nesting boxes, and a dust bath with wood ash and sand inside under the nesting box, so they canât leave their droppings in it.
Harvey Usseryâs book, The Home Chicken Flock, is our favorite chicken book, with great information and many ideas for providing nonindustrial feed sources. Our goal is to have chickens fed only on decomposers in compost, such as soldier fly larvae from a soldier fly farm and worms from a worm farm under the rabbits, in addition to mineral-accumulating greens such as chicory in winter, comfrey from September to May, and alfalfa, plus many other greens growing in the forest garden surrounding the bio-intensive garden beds.
We are still working on achieving the desired levels of decomposers in the compost heap, plus a compost that can easily be turned by chickensâ more experimenting is needed to get the right size carbon sources in there. Perhaps a chipper or mulcher to mulch the tagasaste branches eaten by rabbits will provide the best possible carbon, plus composted crops from the garden, which will also have to go through the chipper so chickens can turn it easily. In the meantime we are buying organic maize, nixtamalizing it (soaking it in woodash and water for several days) before feeding, to increase the minerals available, for no extra cost.
Red combs show the mineralization level of chickens. The more nutritionally dense food you feed them, the longer their combs will stay red, the longer they will lay, and the higher the egg quality will be.
KOANGA URBAN RABBITS 101
Our goal is to provide one or two rabbits for the kitchen each week, fed solely from food harvested in either the urban garden or from local foraging, with no commercial feed. We will keep two does so each doe will be bred every twelve weeks, leaving plenty of time for recovery and ensuring health and raising large babies that grow fast!
Rabbits are quite particular when it comes to what goes into and leaves their bodies. Because their leafy diets include so much cellulose, rabbits produce two different types of excrement: the first are hard, light-brown droppings (which will be made into mineral-rich vermicast by the wormfarm below); the second are darker, soft pellets or caecotrophs, which the rabbits eat! If you see this, donât be alarmed! Like cows chewing the cud, rabbits re-ingest these droppings to further digest their food and extract as many nutrients as possible. This is how rabbits get their vitamin B12.
Another aspect of their unique digestive system is rabbitsâ inability to process gas; because they cannot burp or pass gas, gassy foods like grass can make a rabbit very sick and, as a result, we have to watch what they are fed.
Rabbits feed on herbs, forbs, and leafy weeds, and can eat a lotâabout one and one-half cups of leafy greens, stalks, and dry material per kilogram of body weight each day, and three times as much when theyâre pregnant. Our bunnies particularly like clover, plantain, chickory and dandelion leaves; some other rabbit-approved foods include radicchio, endive, silverbeet, raspberry leaves, dandelion flowers, and, occasionally, carrot tops. The darker the better! Light-colored plants have little nutritional value for rabbits and should be avoided.
The following foods are toxic to rabbits, and should not be fed to them: brassicas (including cabbage, swede, turnip, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi), amaranth, foxglove, lettuce, lupine, laurel, oak, nuts and seeds, horse chestnuts, poppy, potato (leaves, sprouts, or peels); rhubarb leaves, soybeans or soybean vines and tomato plant parts. Rabbits, like most animals, are creatures of habit, and if they are not used to something, it may take a while for them to get used to eating it!
In addition to the leafy stuff, we include 50 percent stalky material in each bundle of green feedâplant stems, chickory branches and fruit tree prunings, willow, tagasaste, alfalfa hay, meadow hay, but not fruit. Small amounts of certain fruits are okay, like strawberries, apples (though not the seeds, which are poisonous to rabbits), pears, cherries, blueberries, grapes and bananas. However, because of its high sugar content, fruit is like junk food for rabbits, and should not be given in large amounts.
We will buy local meadow hay and alfalfa hay rather than pellets containing many dubious ingredients. I suggest if you donât have access to hay or alfalfa hay that you begin with only one doe and get to know your local feed sources and build up skills and feed resilience before taking responsibility for more does and babies.
Rabbit Cage Design
We plan to install five cages across the garden-facing wall of the house, two cages for the does, one cage for the buck, and two cages for the fryers (rabbits weaned young).
The cages will be one meter square, 45cm high so that the rabbits have room to stand up. The mesh size will be no larger than 25mm on the bottom (we will use 19-13mm). This is so that the rabbits do not get sore feet. If it is too large they hurt their feet, if it is too small the feces pellets cannot fall through the holes.
Breeding Stock
The New Zealand White is the worldâs most popular meat rabbit due to gaining weight quickly, with the Californian White a close second due to having a high dress-out weight. Our rabbits are a cross between the two, which is common in New Zealand.
We plan to stagger the production of litters in order to manage the number of baby rabbits more easily. Each doe will produce about forty young each year. One doe at a time will be put into the cage with the buck for mating. (She will get territorial if we put him into her cage.) The nest will go in just prior to birth of the litter or she will ruin it.
Thirty-one days after mating the does give birth to eight to eleven young. It is normal to lose one or two. At two weeks the kits (baby rabbits) open their eyes and leave the nest. The does wean their kits at four weeks, when we will put them into a separate cage. They are now called fryers and can be moved around the rabbit tractor track surrounding the garden. During wet and cold months they will prefer to be in a dry cage. The rabbits are ready for eating at thirteen to sixteen weeks, or a live weight of 2.5kg (about 5.5 pounds). We found that using no grain or industrial pellets, they took a little longer to reach eating size if there wasnât unlimited tagasaste.
We will rebreed the mother four weeks after her previous litter is weaned. We could rebreed five days after birth to step up production but it is preferable for the mother to give her a break. The plan is to replace all breeding stock at three years. We will swap out breeding mothers with daughters and bring in a new buck.
The Rabbit Tractor
This is a cage that sits on the ground, measuring 1m x 2m. It is moved to a new spot every day so the young rabbits can be in contact with the ground, thereby gaining contact with vitally important micro-organisms. They will also be able to eat the nutritious herbal ground cover consisting of alfalfa, clover and chicory. Yarrow, comfrey and French sorrel will also be available for them to eat.
The rabbit tractor will move in a clockwise direction around the edge of the vegetable garden on a 1.3m track. It has the carrying capacity of about eight rabbits.
BIOCHAR IN THE URBAN GARDEN
Once we discovered that rabbits did so well on locally harvested tagasaste, and we saw how many tagasaste branches we ended up with in a pile as a waste product each week, we saw the opportunity to use a chipper (possibly to be shared with many neighbors) to chip them up, along with neighborsâ hedge trimmings and prunings from parks, fruit trees, etc. We could then use the chips as a carbon resource in our chicken straw yard and compost heap. Eventually this would produce high quality humus when mixed with scraps and chicken manure. (Laying hens lay 0.5kg per week, that’s over one pound, of manure!)
We also saw that we could use these branches to make biochar. Biochar is essentially finely ground charcoal that is added to the soil. While not biologically active, it hosts and holds much water, minerals and microbes. This biochar also gets added to the chicken scratch yard, and becomes part of our compost heap, subsequently used to build soil on our main urban garden. Adding it to the compost means the biochar will be fully charged before it is added to the garden, and so will not remove minerals from the soil to charge itself once in the bed.
If youâd like to understand more about biochar, and how biochar together with high quality compost grows soil at very fast rates, read The Biochar Solution by Albert Bates. The Koanga Institute will be publishing a “Make Your Own Biochar” booklet, around March or April 2014.
We are very proud of our integrated garden, designed to produce the nutrition required by one family, and look forward to continued improvements and efficiencies in the coming years.
SIDEBARS
THE CHALLENGE
Weston Price found that indigenous people consumed over 12,000 IU of fat-soluble vitamin A and over 1500 mg calcium in their diets on a daily basis. In our experience these are amongst the most difficult elements to get enough of in an industrial diet, as well as in a non-industrial whole foods diet.
Some groups of people he studied ate little or no meat, but large quantities of raw or fermented milk and cream; others ate beans and grain and small amounts of animal products, including insects and dried shrimp and fish.
But no matter what the particulars of the diet, all had high levels of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K, as well as calcium. Obtaining these from either the industrial diet or a small garden is the challenge of the modern age.
THE HARVEST
If you follow the instructions and do a great job of taking care of the soil (see our “Beginner Gardener” booklet), you could expect to get the following harvest from your vegetable garden of 200 square meters over one year:
SUMMER GARDEN
Tomatoes: 40kg
Basil: pick daily for 3 months plus
pesto and dry basil for many meals
Cucumber: 30kg
Red Kuri pumpkin: 40kg (20 2kg pumpkins)
Delicata pumpkin: 20kg (60 pumpkins)
Courgettes: 7kg
Lettuce: 100 small hearting plus another 100 in a second planting
Welsh Bunching onions: enough to pick some every day
Sweetcorn: 240 cobs
WINTER GARDEN
Carrots: 80 kg
Beetroot: 80kg
Daikon: 90kg, excellent raw, cooked or fermented, edible leaves
Peas: 1.5kg
Broadbeans (Shellout): 6kg
Silverbeet: 20kg
Cabbage: 20kg
Leeks: 50kg
Broccoli: 20kg, includes eating stems and leaves
LAYING HEN MANAGEMENT
Morning
1. First thing in the morning check chickensâ water, clean as often as necessary to keep clear and fresh.
2. Run your eye over each chicken to see that they are active, bright eyed and red combed.
3. On a weekly basis check and fill if necessary the dust bath (sand and wood ash plus diatomaceous earth).
4. Enter chicken yard and fork up a pile of compost so they can turn it over (if they arenât already doing that), getting them used to eating the decomposers, forking in the dayâs compost and scraps from the house, until they can do it themselves.
5. Throw them a bunch of greens. In summer lots of comfrey from urban garden is great (comfrey is high in protein and low in fiber, and makes excellent chicken feed), plus as much dark green mineral accumulators as possible, including grass, clover, chicory, sorrel, plantain, tagasaste, dock.
Afternoon
1. Collect eggs, ensure hay is fresh and clean egg boxes.
2. Give them soaked corn and feed as much as they can eat with nothing left over for rats in the night or birds early in the morning, and to encourage compost feeding in morning. Add one tablespoon of chicken minerals to corn at point of feeding to chickens and one tablespoon of seaweed meal whilst building worm and soldier fly systems.
3. Learn to handle chickens to do a monthly check on their health. See instructions in The Home Chicken Flock by Harvey Ussery.
RABBIT MANAGEMENT
1. Feed as often as necessary to keep some feed in their trays.
2. Fill feeders each evening with brought in meadow hay.
3. In morning feed a mixture of grass, plantain, chicory, clover, dandelion chickweed, puha, comfrey, sorrel, etc., enough to keep them busy until 10 am. This may need topping up mid morning to last until lunch time.
4. Feed either tagasaste or willow or alfalfa hay (brought in) during the afternoon.
5. Check water manually each day to ensure itâs running.
6. Rake out droppings in worm farm under rabbit cages daily to ensure even spread.
7. Do a quick check daily for signs of ill health or poor spirits.
8. Clean out cages daily; it is essential cages are kept very clean.
9. When pulling out stripped branches, pile up those ready to put through mulcher.
10. All the loose hay and feed that drops outside of worm farm can be used as mulch for cordoned apples, grape and kiwifruit.
Rabbit in the Kitchen
The only parts of a rabbit you should throw out are the intestines, stomach, tail and feet. Hereâs a breakdown of rabbit
parts and some of the ways we can use them:
Head: Heads traditionally are used in stews and stocks.
Bones: Like any set of animal bones, rabbit carcasses can be roasted and boiled to make stock and rabbit jus.
Heart: Rabbit hearts and other offal (except the intestines and stomach) can go into stuffings and charcuterie.
Liver: Rabbit livers have a reputation for tasting mild and clean. Rabbit liver pâtÊ is a perennial favorite, as are deep-fried livers.
Kidneys: Poach rabbit kidneys in butter and add the morsels to a ragoĂťt of livers, bacon, shallots, herbs, and sherry vinegar. You also can render the precious fat surrounding the kidneys; just finely grind the fat, slowly heat it, and strain it. The rendered rabbit fat, just like lard, can be used in pastry dough and for frying.
Lungs: Can go into the stock.
Shoulder and hind legs: Our favorite dish is rabbit stew, see below.
Belly and saddle: The thin rabbit belly is attached to the saddle, a cut of meat that you can debone much like a chicken breast. The saddle also yields two thin rabbit tenderloins; the small pieces of meat tend to get lost in a dish, so itâs best to stuff them back into the saddle. You can leave the belly attached; wrap belly around the saddle (and stuff with vegetable fillings) to prevent meat from drying out. Common saddle preparations include roasting and frying.
Rib rack: Compared to beef or pork ribs, rabbit rib racks come in a âBarbie-sizedâ portion, but they are still good on the BB Q and then the bones into broth.
Rabbit Stew from Change of Heart by Kay Baxter
1 large rabbit, cut into pieces
1 bouquet garni
3 tablespoons lard, tallow or coconut oil
8 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 cup red wine
1 onion, finely chopped
12 small new potatoes
Sear rabbit pieces in lard, remove from pan. Add garlic, onion and bouquet garni, and sautĂŠ 3 minutes. Add bacon, sautĂŠ 5 minutes, return rabbit, add red wine and 3 cups water. Place a lid on dish and simmer gently for 1 1/2 hours or until very tender. Add potatoes and continue simmering until cooked.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2013.
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