Kitty Khimeros

This all sounds so great in theory x'D  I'm feeling so lost right now.  I moved here to NB because I wanted to have a tiny house, raise my own meat, have some small livestock and grow my own vegetables.  Ended up moving too far up north to where the growing season is very short (zone 3), the snow covers the tops of my 5-foot fencing in winter and drifts past my roofline.  Was told I could not build my tiny house and ended up in a previously abandoned house with no running water. plumbing and very little electrical, which I can handle just fine if it was ALL I had to deal with.  My online business of 10+ years has crashed, and I'm now scrambling for rides at 4 AM so I can get to work at Walmart, where I work in the meat department.  I have a lot of health issues that make it a severe struggle to work away from home.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still a hard worker and capable of doing my share of snow shoveling, composting, gardeniing, water carrying, hand-washing laundry, shoveling animal pens, and all the other work that needs to be done around here, but it takes me longer than other people and I generally need to organize my work into sessions in between my computer work.  But now all I can see is a future of working at Walmart and then spending my "days off" working at my second and third jobs online just to try to survive.  I don't know how people manage to make it work to live in these kind of communities unless they have some kind of really well-paying job that they can go to during the day.  I have whittled my monthly expenses down as much as I possibly can and still struggle.  I've given up on the gardening for the most part, and stopped breeding my meat rabbits because the expense is so high for feed and the time is just not there.  

I was worried about that at first too, but on a horse forum I was advised that on 1/8 acre paddocks there was no chance of them getting enough fodder for it to be a problem? These will be large ponies that an adult can ride, not little minis.

Joel Salatin is my hero And yes that's exactly what I wanted to go for, a mix of a lot of different plants. That's why I was so annoyed when I looked them all up and found lists listing them as poisonous to horses! Pretty much everything from red clover to vetch to mustard to rye and fescue grass... I will check out the links, thanks very much!

I am in Canada, and I do not think American companies will ship seed to Canada but I'll check it out.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have this "extension" service here. I keep reading about all the useful things offered by "extension" offices but I have tried searching for them for my province and can't find anything. Perhaps there is an equivalent that I don't know the term for...

I guess another point would be that as I'll be using these paddocks for grazing, they are seldom or never going to be allowed to grow to seeding stage before I either chop them down or the animals graze them down. So would that mean that rye grass would be ok? It's one of the most recommended for improving the kind of soil I'll be dealing with.

The other issue I'm having is finding organic seeds for cover crops. Not having much luck there.

One of the lists I was looking at is here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plants_poisonous_to_equines

Some of them do list caveats like not using in hay, however when looking at sites offering cover crop seeds for sale today, a couple of them noted not to use red clover or sweet clover anywhere that is planned for use for horse pasture. There were similar notes for mustard and sorghum.

I distinctly remember sweet clover being a favourite of the horses I was around when I was young, though...

The problem is that just by reading websites, I have no way to confirm or deny which list is accurate and which list is not. That's why I'd like some advice from people who actually own horses and have experience with these plants It is frustrating because there is such a tendency for people to start yelling "I'M SUING!" every time something goes wrong that people are now posting warnings on EVERYTHING, even if the chances of anything going wrong are slight. I mean if you buy a fake firelog from the store now, it has a "warning, flammable" label on it.... *eyeroll*

I'll soon be moving to an acre of land in New Brunswick and plan to have a couple of ponies. Current plan is to divide most of the land up into 1/8th acre rotating paddocks.

I know that this isn't enough land for my ponies to get anywhere near all of their food by grazing, but I do want them to at least get some. From what I can find out (haven't seen the land myself yet) the soil there is not good. Thin, poor, and acidic. I was planning to immediately start planting cover crops to improve pasture. However, when I checked a list of plants that are poisonous to horses against my list of possible cover crops.. almost ALL of them are listed as toxic to horses. Including mustard, rye grass, clovers and vetch...

I know there's only so much I can learn by "book learning" and I'm hoping to get some practical advice from people who keep horses as to whether it's true that all of these things are toxic, or if you have any other recommendation for cover crops that are safe for livestock to graze on? I plan to follow the horses with chickens as they move around the property.

Could one perhaps keep the chickens and/or rabbits down in the... what is it called, the term slips my mind atm... the pit dug in the floor to draw down the cold air? perhaps with an exit to the outside for air/exercise.

May I make a suggestion?

I was a bred and showed rabbits for 5+ years. I actually tried to use totes as nesting boxes at one point, but discovered that because plastic cannot breathe, it tends to become very damp and close inside, even if you pierce some holes to let condensation escape.

Rabbits tend to find this uncomfortable and it also promotes the growth of mold and mildew, which can be very dangerous especially to young kits.

If you can find something that is more breathable to construct your dens/nesting boxes from, you might have even greater success ^^