Vermont

With the exception of the calf's birth, we never got around to posting pictures from our wonderful week at Family Camp in August. School started the day after we got home, and life got crazy. But we all loved camp, and the songs and jokes and memories have been woven through our fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 Ringing the camp dinner bell

Our open-air cabin

The bunk was labeled before we arrived

 

Quaker meeting circle

One-week-old bunnies!

We loved it enough that the girls and I went back last weekend to help with the fall harvest on the camp farm.

 

 Eight-week old bunnies!

 

 

 So guess who came home with us? 

Actually, we'd promised the girls a rabbit back in March, as a weaning present for Alice. We didn't find one locally, either in shelters or pet stores. When we met the bunnies in Vermont in August, it seemed time to renew the promise. But the bunnies were too young to leave their mother at that point. So we decided to return for one at Harvest Weekend. In the interim, Edith read assiduously on rabbit care and set up a cage and other accoutrements. She practiced changing the water every day, even before there was anyone to drink it.

Tom has been saying he needs more males in the family, but the girls claimed Hestia (the calico) first and since genetically a calico can only be a girl, that committed us to another female family member. To keep Hestia company we took one of her litter mates, and of course, with one female rabbit we didn't want a male. So we took a sister, who got their mother's angora genes. Luna makes a great therapy rabbit that way--so soft to stroke at the end of a hard day! And she may launch me in small-scale fiber production, too.

So five girls, one boy in the family. And a cozy apartment. But for the girls, some important new responsibilities and good relationships.