Hendersons' Habitat: Succulent carnage: part 2 of 3: down on the (cactus) farm

Today I'm going to document the damage that occurred during early December's nasty frost. Just before we moved up here in February 2012 I took cuttings from many of my cacti and succulents from the original Hendersons' Habitat in Lawndale, CA. With no place really to put the plants, and being terribly busy, I just planted them in rows in a patch of open ground. Soon nearly all of the plants rooted in what I began to call the Cactus Farm, the idea being that these plants could be dug up and moved or harvested for cuttings as develop the gardens. Soon after establishing the Cactus Farm I answered a Craigslist ad for "free cactus" in May of 2012 (who can't resist free cactus??)

Anyway, I visited a yard completely overrun with Mission or Indian fig cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) and I harvested enough to fill the back of our Honda AND a trailer. What I didn't realize was that the move from an urban backyard to the wilds of Hendersons' Habitat was a bit much for these opuntias, and many of them sunburned badly. As they began to recover, they were chewed down by jackrabbits. I hastily erected a fence and the Farm was fine until December 2013.