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.

At T-Bone’s Place, living soil does not start with a bag from the garden center. It starts with what the farmstead already gives back: rabbit bedding, hay, bunny berries, feed waste, air, moisture, and time. “Here’s how we turn rough organic material into rich, usable soil without buying bagged amendments.

Bountiful Buckets™ are built from more than soil, seeds, and recycled containers. Each one carries a little bit of our greenhouse, our rabbitry, our compost piles, our weather lessons, and our real-life farmstead learning. At T-Bone’s Place, they are one small way we share what has worked for us, what we are still learning, and what can be possible when folks grow with what they have.

We rebuilt our cattle-panel greenhouse with stacked 5”x5” beams, homemade living soil, raised tote beds, and a whole lot of trial, error, and “well, now we know” farmstead learning…