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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOkEnbYcns – Spoke about this idea in through a similar lens a decade ago (wow time flies!) if you are interested in hearing origin ideas being shared. It has evolved a bit over time but the basic idea seems sound and reasonable to me at this point. Hope it helps shift feelings of relationship to wild animals and offers bonus fertility too!
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47 Comments
Had to wear the puffy jacket here in jacksonville😮,
I've often wondered about the sanitation/food safety of wild caught rabbit meat. Seems like a great way to add some protein to the yields
I always feel that we should feed the wildlife. We don’t consider their needs when we cut down trees or clear land to build our homes and then put up structures to keep the wildlife out. I consider it being good Stewart’s of what we’ve been blessed with. 😊
It's always such a balance. Humans have created a lot of food deserts for the wildlife due to development, so food forests become their little oasis. Appreciate you for encouraging people to strive for balance over complete eradication.
Thank you, Sean! That's a great idea. We have a few hare in the area, and I recently planted some willow cuttings (17 varieties), which I want to protect. Also, most of the trees in our garden don't have a guard. I just stuck branches (from the hornbeam hedge) around the young trees to protect from wind and deer, at least a bit. Providing some food for rabbits in that way might help to keep them away from nibbling our trees. Have a lovely evening!
❤🥰🦋🐝🧑🦳
Gotta love the way snow makes tracking so easy. Helps display the stories happening all around us with us barely aware.
Saw those air prune cages and it reminded me that I'm having snow issues. When the snow builds up on the top. Is my mesh too small? Do you have to dust/shovel them off? Any thoughts?
In the vein of inviting wild critters to deposit fertility in places of your choice, there's the trick of putting a stick about four feet long in the ground in a garden bed where you want added fertility. The stick serves as a perch for birds as they are hunting and helps with them contributing to pest control as well as being a focal point for fertility bombs.
Sucks that people give you crap about autumn olive. Most houses are not built in virgin forest, they are in places that have already been devastated. And autumn olice has already been apread far and wide by the highway industry so there's really no reason to worry about it. I think we are heading towards hard times where we will need to woery about basic survival and we need to focus on resilience in our honesites first and foremost. Gotta include natives too for maximum interaction with the food web, but non-native too. In VT japanese knotweed is already everywhere, spraying roundup on it doesn't kill it, just makes it turn brown, comes back the next year. Much smarter to eat it, let chickens run in it, cut it for compist biomass before it goes to seed. All sorts of yields. It's easy to break in the autumn and makes for a nice nest to lie on and watch the river flow. Just gotta think outside the box.
You are such a gentle soul 🥰🦋🐝
Sepp Holzer recommends not pruning the apple trees to allow the lower branches to touch the ground. The rabbits prefer the tender branch tips so are less likely to girdle the tree by eating the bark of the trunk.
You are brave to be out in this weather
Permaculture genius!
(We could build endless fences, and fortify them, add bricks and rocks, shoot them, trap them, but this is so much less work and so much more permie!). Something devours my currants and elderberries. Must be the deer.
woah great idea
i make rings from metal fence materials works ok to protect from ground hogs
I have plenty to share with rabbits if they would just stay away from my fruit trees
I've been banking any apple, cherry, autumn olive, and really most tree prunings over my garden beds to collect manure. I even collect some for the air-prune beds, the trees and shrubs seem to adore it! It's amazing how much fertility they will stockpile over winter! And if the rabbit numbers seem too great…….well, they furnish some tasty wild meat as well if you wish to go that route!
Beautiful thought process. The rabbits may well appreciate it! I’ll be interested to see how the system works out in the spring.
Thank you for the info
I like the way Sean says poops, as if each little piece is a poop. We sometimes say pellets, but that confuses them with the alfalfa pellets we feed them. I guess both are really the same thing. About 70 years ago my old grandfather tried to convince me it would be healthful to eat rabbit pellets, or poops, out of hand. I didn't fall for it! 😜
I'm curious if you have any thoughts about raccoons. We had a family of 5 roll in last summer, and think they may have been the ones stealing our 7 apples right before each was ready to pick. Originally, we cursed the squirrels. It's a newer, very small tree and are at a loss about how to protect the few fruits we hope to get again. It was a broken pot, missing dirt, no tag sale item, so we don't even know what we're missing!
You are so kind and gentle. I love rabbits and very much enjoyed this video. 🌱💚🌻🐝🐓🌲❄️
Joyfully amazed what I learn here . Now I don’t have a rabbit issue but deer are my primary issue with fruit trees . So as I watched your discussion I realized I accidentally followed your logic this year . I cut trees for firewood and put tops to chip near my trails away from the orchard . I noticed the deer come in and eat at the tops I have piled up and no orchard damage this year so far ! Brilliant!
Seems like you have an unusual high number of rabbits in your area. We have 10 acres of land that is quite rural and sometimes we rarely see a rabbit. We do have a handful of predators though. We use to have a family or two every year up by the house and buildings but now I get excited just to see any on the property. As neighbors come and go, so do their dogs and I think atm, all the neighbors have dogs, so that might be a factor as well. 🤔
Thank you for your ideas on this touchy subject. They are helpful.
🐰💕⛄️🐇👏🏼
And then there's always some hot hasenpfeffer.
Lol, when you mentioned a final solution I figured this was going to end up as a recipe video.
Rabbits in the landscape are also a banked food source. Create an abundance for everyone.
Antique roses . They chew the canes.
oh the hare and bunny (and deer) love to eat our currents here in Germany, even without winter… We tend to put our aplle cuttings (which they seem to prefer) into the brush hedges where they can reach them.
Now I just need to learn how to make my garden benefit from woodchuck
Great points. Hoping to get out soon and assess the damage and apply this concept
My plum tree doesn’t have foliage right now, but the rabbits like to visit it and leave little poos just at the mulch line lol. I try to throw out extra lettuce seed, etc at the edge of the property/green space for them and we have an understanding now.
I have lots of Autumn Olive on my property and I love them, such a unique flavor I'm looking forward to some recipe's to explore this next season. I also have A TON of Chinese Privet which is awful. One thing I have found though is that the Rabbits browse the privet. I keep them cut back and drop them, the rabbits feed on the shoots and young saplings as well as any leaves that have remained on the plant. I've also witnessed my chickens eating Privet leaves as well.
This is SUCH a powerful example of observation and adaptation rather than colonization and exploitation.
Currents are also now browsed by deer (at least here they're not), I wonder what it is about them that animals don't like.
Higher rabbit load this winter, will bring in & feed a den of foxes. Not a bad trade.
So so lovely to see edible acres again and to hear more lovely wisdom.
I breed rabbits in an open-air colony for meat, and I feed them from my urban food forest. They do not eat current, jastaberry, gooseberry, or elderberry at all. I thought it was just maybe because they are spoiled, but I've also read that they don't like them. For European rabbits (domestic), many people avoid feeding them wood from pitted fruit trees, peaches, and plums..that kinda thing. The idea is that because the pits have cyanide, so does the wood. That is true, but this time of year, just like the energy in the tree retreats, so does the cyanide. If the tree is not dormant and I take cuts, I don't give them the wood until it's been off the tree for 60 days. 😅..don't mind my info dump, I thought you may think it was interesting. Have a good day
EdibleAcres, always consistently shares great information and proves reality.
thank you for modeling compassionate agriculture 🐰💙
I have found that the technique you described works with dogwood too. Their poop is great for the soil!
Thank you.
They love young serviceberry as well, but they show no interest in my currants.
This is exactly the type of peaceful cooperation with the local fauna that I'm hoping to work on. THANK YOU for sharing!
How about rat pressure?