Last week, three new rabbits joined us: one male and two females. For whatever reason, we named them Fred, Ethyl and Lucy. Except for the one being a boy rabbit, you can’t tell them apart.

Fred is a New Zealand-Altex cross. The Altex is a new breed developed specifically for the rabbit meat market. They are a bigger rabbit but one that gains rapidly, having a better meat-to-bone ratio in a much shorter time.

Ethyl and Lucy are New Zealand does. Breeding an Altex buck to a New Zealand doe produces the best meat rabbits. The litters are large to start with and they gain weight rapidly.

One thing is for sure… these guys are just three months old and already bigger than my other breeding age rabbits. We won’t breed them until they’re six months old, and by that time, they should be HUGE!

I won’t get rid of my other, smaller rabbits just yet. I want to see how the new ones produce before I make that change. These may be smaller but they’ve been putting meat in the freezer on a steady basis. Besides, I have a spotted male that is producing the cutest spotted bunnies… just right for people who are looking for cute pets. That may be a nice little market to look at to help cover feed costs.

I’ll get some pictures taken later. In the meantime, Thank you, Heather. The rabbits are doing great and we’ve all fallen in love with them.

Yes, I know… you are probably one of those who hates broccoli. This won’t interest you at all, but there are others out there who love the green veggie and prize it for its nutritional value. Or maybe you like the taste… or whatever. At any rate, we love the stuff and until recently, couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I mean, enough of the really fresh broccoli, right from the garden.

This year, I started my own seeds for broccoli and cauliflower plants. Those are our two favorite vegetables and so why not try to grow enough to put some in the freezer, I thought. The seeds sprouted easily enough in their little starter trays. I got the cauliflower transplanted into 3″ pots so they could grow out and I got 18 broccoli seedlings transplanted. Before I could finish, we were hit by a hard freeze. Those plants in the 3″ pots didn’t even seem to notice the temperature but the poor broccoli seedlings in the starter tray were frozen rock solid.

So, the 18 plants I had transplanted are now beginning to produce for us. I put 3 plants into each of two earthboxes, to see how they did in containers. The rest went into a raised bed in the garden.

The earthboxes produced edible broccoli about two weeks earlier than that planted in raised beds. However, the raised bed plants are producing way bigger heads.

The earliest broccoli never made it into the fridge, much less the freezer. We gobbled it up as fast as I could cut it. Fresh from the garden, broccoli is simply unbelievable. It’s a lovely bright green, tender and sweet.

Broccoli is one of the easiest vegetables to grow but it preferrs cooler temperatures than we normally get in southwest Florida. This year, we had a long, cold winter with a number of frosts and even light snow flurries one day. The broccoli and cauliflower didn’t even notice.

I just finished putting six two-serving packages of broccoli into the freezer. Unlike our northern friends who enjoy the summer’s produce during the frigid winter months, we will enjoy this in the stifling summer months when it’s too hot to grow anything other than pumpkins, sweet potatoes and squash.

This is the first time I’ve tried growing broccoli since moving to Florida. It won’t be the last. In fact, this year I plan on starting my plants in October so I can have transplants ready to go into the raised beds in late November or early December. I just might be able to get two crops by doing it that way… unless we get a “normal” Florida winter, that is.

This blog has been an ongoing effort. It’s been on-line several times but due to technical problems, it’s been shut down for a while. So, once again I’m saying Hello, world! It’s good to be back and hopefully, this time it will be permenant.