Dennis Hillier

Hi Anne, we advertise on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist and get referrals from a few of our regular customers. We find the biggest challenges to be lack of consistency and trying to prepare what we need to grow a couple years in advance. We have done a little shipping to test the waters and we get a handful of requests usually weekly, trying to have more of a presence online seems logical but it’s a time commitment and outside of our scope of what we want for our business. We had one bad experience with an order being lost by USPS and another severe delay resulting in damage to the plants and honestly it wasn’t something we wanted to deal with on a regular basis.

I think if someone was trying to keep a small footprint with Jerusalem artichokes or had limited growing area they could be container grown. I know that digging some up in the fall and putting them in a refrigerator they keep for a week but for our needs we are targeting 500 lbs of good storable root vegetables for the winter so we are growing more beets and turnips based on their keeping ability

I feed leaves, stalks and tubers in the spring and then mostly leaves during the summer on a daily basis. We feed tubers in the fall but haven’t had good luck storing them so we feed them until the ground freezes

For me personally I think the colony setting made me feel better than having them in cages but from a safety and handling standpoint it’s not ideal, I think the accidental breeding is also a negative factor that results in to many losses and having to deal with more rabbits than intended or needed

The Jerusalem artichoke will spread about 2-3’ in diameter per year in good fertile soil. I have mixed feelings about planting it as it started out in a corner of the big garden with twenty tubers and six years later it’s gotten out of control and requires a lot of effort to manage it. The rabbits absolutely love all parts of the plant and it’s pretty easy to pull up or cut a big amount every morning. It doesn’t store very well so we use it strictly during the growing season.

We live in Vermont and we have associated with twisted tree farm and edible acres in the early years of creating a small home based nursery. I think if you’re open to using the internet and social media with this type of business then there’s potential. I started this before I met my wife and probably have sold a thousand trees and lots of native plants, investing in infrastructure along the way. Honestly I have kinda wanted to quit a couple times and then kept trying, we love it but we don’t have a website and a shipping system in place and rely on local customers. It’s sometimes difficult to work very hard for five months and only see $1300 in the bank after expenses with two of us working on this. Some years we do alright and other times we end up donating plants and not being very profitable. We’re going to try the farmers market route probably and get set up to take digital payments, one of the reasons we haven’t gotten into the internet realm is we want to help others with small properties be self sustainable but it’s not very profitable for the time involved.

Definitely was a sad day for me, my buck Frosty and doe blueberry were two of my favorite rabbits. Old frosty was a Californian and that little dude would stand on his hind legs and clap and rub his front paws together when he would see me coming. He would do anything to get my attention and hang out, I actually tried to nurse him along after his accident but had to put him down eventually as he was not going to survive for the long term.

I have raised meat rabbits since around 2016 and built a colony setup in 2020. My first negative happened within the first week and a half with the breeding rabbits just going nuts and the bucks were in separate areas but also horsing around. Three of my best does and a buck broke their own backs. After that things went well for awhile and then it got to a point with breeding a few does and then the occasional buck from a previous litter slips through the cracks and is in with the does resulting in litters that weren’t planned on .This has resulted in quite a few litter losses when does have had unexpected litters in the dead of winter. We found that they are not as well socialized with people in a colony which makes them difficult to catch especially if its for a customer. We have decided to custom build 12-15 separate housing units and a couple decent sized grow out cages inside the current enclosure for the rabbits this spring. We separated some already into a hutch that I built and that seems to be a safer and better alternative for us.

I was in a similar situation and was with someone that dramatically increased the amount of different animals on the homestead. When things ended I was driving truck 12-13 hours a day for a big orchard operation making deliveries. The solution that worked best for me was to rehome a lot of the critters down to a handful of breeding stock and offer my neighbors free vegetables so there was little waste. I then took a year to regroup and find a better work life balance and slowly rebuilt things as I got into another relationship. It worked for me and still allowed me to keep a few critters that could be utilized to breed when I was in a better situation

We have also grown comfrey from the same source and sell some trees and plants but honestly the shipping, digital payments and everything that you need to be on top of to sell online doesn’t trip my trigger and it definitely hinders us financially. I ran into one issue selling through facebook marketplace where the customer sent a check and we shipped her comfrey out the next day. Like 3-4 weeks later she messaged us and says she never received anything, normally I am fairly organized but we think we misplaced or accidentally threw out the post office shipping information. We were traveling to her state so we arranged to bring some comfrey and meet her about half hour from her home but last minute she couldn’t make it. It’s nice to earn a little money but wish we could just sell locally and earn a living.