What Tom was up to while I was in China

It was waaaay to hot out for Tom to pound tires while I was away in China, so he turned his focus to other things. We were in the market for a cheap trailer or shed to use as a chicken coop in the near future, and so of course an old 54 foot by 12 foot mobile home was only natural :P It's set up on a nice level pad with blocks so it (hopefully) won't sink in 30+ years. Still need to do a few things to it (tear out some carpet and lay lino for easy cleaning, replace a few ceiling tiles, build steps, add some skirting), but it's basically ready and waiting for chickens. Not sure if we'll be ready for chickens by next spring though. 

 

This (below) will be our rabbitry (a place to house our rabbits). Large windows to let light in. The rabbits will be in cages inside because (1) we don't want them eaten by predators, and (2) our ground isn't totally flat making it nearly impossible to fence them into a small outdoor area. We bought the huge windows first and based the dimensions of the building off the dimensions of the windows and the cages. Cages should be about 1 square root per pound of rabbit, so if your rabbits are 6 pounds you want the cages to be say 2 feet by 3 feet. Not only do you need large cages but there needs to be 3 feet of space all around the cages to facilitate cleaning. Trust me, that is very important!

Rabbitry

Roof pic (rabbitry).

 We'll do the same rainwater collection idea from the earthship with the rabbitry (and eventually the mobile home chicken coop). Rabbits can drink 1L a day each. By next summer we should have enough money to deal with backburying a cistern.The plan is to hook up a pump and a bunch of pipes with water valves along the cages so it will be a totally automated watering system.

Rabbitry + shed roof.

This (above) is the join between the rabbitry and the attached shed. The entire thing (rabbitry + shed) was supposed to be earthbag construction, but things didn't quite work out so the rabbitry is only maybe 3 ft earthbag and the rest regular wood construction, and the shorter and smaller 10ft x 10ft shed is all earthbag)

A view from the roof

Rabbitry + shed

22 inch lawn mower that can't quite handle 10 acres! Holly cow those weeds grow like...weeds. Camper in background.

We need some goats to take care of these weeds!

China

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I was out in China for work for two weeks and didn't realize the extent of internet censorship out there, so I couldn't check my email or update the blog or facebook group. There's not much for updates, we had a couple couples visit to help Tom out while I was away, but the weather did not cooperate (in one instance there was a heat wave warning and people were told not to do anything outside, and in another it had rained so much that tire pounding was impossible). Thanks to those who came out and visited; hopefully the weather cooperates in the future!