“Something special” was Chicken bone broth, BABY! Mmm, mmm, good! We loaded it with carrots, onions, bell peppers, celery, chicken feet, and plenty of garlic, then turned it into a rich homemade broth.

“We got the timer programmed and gave it a go.”

After adjusting the sprinkler head and the hose splitter valve, T-Bone felt pretty good about the process.

But this is only the Proofing Attack.

The Off-Grid Attack comes next.

Read Building a Fodder Watering System: Part One, The Proofing Attack in The Root Cellar at T-Bone’s Place.

Our latest wheat fodder experiment gave us a few wins, a few flops, and a whole new set of questions. From an early Day-3 harvest to seeing how much the rabbits actually ate, we are learning what works, what needs fixing, and where this fodder project may take us next.

By 1930, Ball had grown into a sprawling industrial network built around glass, closures, rubber seals, paper products, machinery, and commercial packaging.

Part Three follows the company through the Great Depression, the purchase and closure of Three Rivers Glass Company, the federal antitrust case, the changing postwar household, and Ball’s unexpected turn from pantry jars toward aerospace.

By 1910, Ball was no longer simply a fruit-jar company in Muncie. The brothers had spent decades buying factories, machinery, molds, and competitors, and they were beginning to knit those pieces into a much larger industrial network.

Part Two follows Ball into Texas, through the First World War and the rise of home canning, the company’s 1922 name change, and the 1925 purchase of Schram, which brought the Drey jar line into the Ball system.

Before Ball became the name stamped across pantry shelves, five brothers began with wooden-jacketed tin cans, borrowed money, and a willingness to move wherever opportunity opened the door.

Part One follows the Ball brothers from Buffalo to Muncie, through their early glassmaking years, aggressive expansion, and the 1909 Greenfield purchase that helped transform Ball into a growing glass empire.

This is where our fodder project moves from soaking seed in a mason jar to real living growth on the rack. In this follow-up to our fodder rack rebuild, we track hard white wheat berries through rinsing, draining, root tails, blackout, hand watering, green shoots, and the big question waiting at the end: will the rabbits eat it?

Fodder is not some shiny new homestead trend. It is an old, practical way of growing feed, and we are testing it from the very beginning at T-Bone’s Place: seed, water, jars, rinsing, tiny root tips, and all.

An old bread tray from a roadside junk-‘tique store gets a second life at T-Bone’s Place as we rebuild our first fodder rack, learn from a window-screen fail, and keep figuring it out from seed to feed.

Rabbits can be one of the most practical animals for a budget homestead. They do not require acres of pasture, a big barn, or heavy infrastructure to produce real food in a small space. At T-Bone’s Place, we are sharing why rabbits make sense for small homesteads, how our custom hutch fits into a compact setup, and how we are building better systems as we go.