Still no sign of George and I've now heard from two neighbors who have not seen him. With the new snow I will see if there are tracks out there when we do bunny chores tomorrow, but if there aren't, I'm going to assume that George is not returning. :(
I did have one person offer to give me rabbits. I might take them up on it.
For dinner tonight I went simple - macaroni and cheese. We had some of the Annie's organic stuff. To make it a little different, I added mesquite seasoning to it. Yes, it's supposed to be a rub for meat, but it added some really nice flavor, and all of the kids ate it and asked for more! Three boxes made, and just barely enough left to put on a plate for Tony when he gets home. We might have to add that seasoning again in the future. It was pretty tasty!
The hazelnuts are still soaking. None have sunk yet (they're still floating), but as I turn the bottle, there's one that's much slower to rise than the rest, so I know they're soaking up properly!
I've been watching some videos on Back To Eden gardening. The idea is that you put newspaper or cardboard down to smother the grass, then add a layer of compost and/or manure on top of the paper layer, with wood chips on top. The concept is that the wood chips will prevent new weed seeds from reaching the fertile soil underneath, while keeping the soil moist. The compost will function as the soil, starting all the good bacteria and such to eating the top and bottom layers. Then you just dig down to the compost level to plant your seeds and then cover the wood chips back to the stems once the plants are up. You don't need to add any fertilizer or compost or anything until the top starts to look like dirt. Once the wood chips decompose into compost themselves, then you add more wood chips to the top. According to the gentleman who came up with this gardening method, he only adds more every 3-6 years (from what I understand).
I find it especially interesting because this is similar in so many ways to how we did our raised beds. We put down cardboard to smother the grass and weeds, then added soil and manure. We didn't add the top layer of wood chips, and we have seen weeds popping up in there. Typically the raised beds are planted in the square foot method so they quickly snuff out the weedy competition. Weeds are really only an issue as the seeds are coming up. But it would be nice to try a system that is promoted as being more natural and needing no weeding. Especially since the new house we're looking at is out in the woods and the garden would be in a huge open field. Both of these give more opportunity for seeds to blow in.
I don't know how set I am on trying to track down compost and wood chips while trying to set up a new household and everything that goes with that. I know we will have at least what comes out from under the bunny barn in the spring clean out. Perhaps that will give enough for a small start-up garden in this Back To Eden style while we get set up and let the bunnies produce more composted manure to expand the garden. And if we end up stuck in this house for another year, I plan to use this method for the back in-ground garden that grew tomatoes in 2015 and tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and squash last year. Last year the weeds choked out a portion of the peppers and tomatoes when I fell behind in weeding. No weeds would mean higher yields!
I'm hoping that we will make some form of update on what we're doing on Tuesday. Or at least, I'm hopeful I will be informed as to what's going on because I'm kind of stuck waiting for now.