Sustainability on the homestead is a big phrase. For me most of the time sustainability is born out of necessity. To put it in plain terms, this is sometimes what sustainability  means to me;  sometimes I am trying to make it to pay day and need to feed my rabbits so I look around on the Homestead and think ; “What can I feed them from my garden?” This week I found two things in the most unlikely of places that my rabbits gobbled up and were quite satisfied with. Vines from my sweet potato pit and purslane  from my front flower pots was their food of choice on this day. I am certainly going to include these two plants in excess next summer just for the purpose of supplementing my growing rabbits. Of course we can all include purslane in our salads. It tastes quite good and is packed with nutrients. While the ornamental purslane that I picked up in my garden center is beautiful and useful, I ran into a garden variety purslane in my Burpee seed catolog that I am excited about trying next summer. Apparently this garden purslane is 4 times the size and very succulent!

One thing about feeding my rabbits upsets me. Most alfalfa crops in the U.S. are, unfortunately genetically modified to resist round up. I guess this is o.k. if you are not planning on eating your rabbits, but I am. Even though the feed store that I go to for my rabbit food will order non-GMO rabbit food ,I have not yet found a way to afford the almost 3 times the price ticket. This problem gives me more incentive to find things in the garden, wild weeds and cover crops that I can feed my rabbits with. Perhaps with the addition of these new crops, I have found, I can afford the higher bill on non GMO feed that I can stretch out more sparingly.I would love to hear what you feed your rabbits from your garden or property. Did you know that most alfalfa rabbit pellets sold in stores are made from genetically modified seed crops?

My plan originally was to pasture my rabbits in my side yard. That is a fancy way of saying I would move their cage around and let them mow my lawn for me. After my run in with the city over my front yard garden fence, frankly I am afraid to go ahead with my plan to pasture my rabbits. See the fight for my front yard garden here. While our city is very lenient about animals on the homestead, if they get even one complaint, enters animal control and you are done raising rabbits, period. I think with the attitude towards pets today, it is likely that the city would receive a complaint about my rabbits being in a pen in the front yard. What do you think? Am I a coward to not use my property the way I want? I think I would chance it if my son wasn’t involved. He raises most of the rabbits on the homestead which helps him pay for Scout Summer Camp ect. Is their something you are doing or not doing on your homestead because of city or HMO restrictions?

This post was shared on Our Simple Homestead Blog Hop and Simple Saturday’s Blog Hop and From the Farm Hop