Rabbitry Vents

We've installed two 6" vents in the rabbitry. We put a fan in one. We'll see how it goes. If it gets too hot in there during the summer we can put another fan in the other vent. Tom's wired it up to a thermostat, so the fan automatically turns on when it's above 24 degrees C and automatically shuts off when it's below 24 degrees. Neat!

Outhouse

This summer we plan on living on the property the entire time (last year we were doing days and weekends, but during the week it was nice to come back into town to have a hot shower, do laundry, sleep in our own bed, etc). We'll have at least one volunteer living there too, as well as other volunteers popping in for a day here & there.

So, we've needed to think about the bathroom situation. Tom just finished making a humanure toilet and 4ft x 4ft outhouse shed. It's basically an outhouse just instead of digging a hole (which would be a royal pain) for pee/poop to fall into, there's a bucket underneath the toilet seat. You throw a scoop of sawdust into it afterwards to prevent odour, and then once the bucket is full you throw the manure onto the base of trees.

A couple pics of the shed below. Pics of the toilet are in the previous post. 

Ok, not entirely finished. Still need to paint it and add a metal roof. Tom wants to set up rainwater collection into a small sink that we can use to wash our hands.

Ball bearing closure ensures the wind won't blow it open. There's also a lock on the inside, for when it's in use.

Humanure?

Tom built a humanure toilet today. Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of such a thing. We wanted to put an outhouse at the acreage so we and volunteers would have somewhere to *ahem* "go". That would involve digging a hole or having a tank that gets emptied every so often. Instead, we're going the humanure route. We'll have essentially an outhouse but instead of poop & pee just dropping down a hole, it's collected into a bucket that you scoop sawdust into every time you use it, so it doesn't stink, and then when the bucket is full you empty it at the base of trees as manure. A good reference website is here.

 Gotta love the toilet seat! Found at the Restore for super cheap!

The orange you see inside is the 5 gallon bucket. You lift the top hinged piece of wood and take the bucket out to empty when needed.

Now, we just need to build a shed to put this thing in!

It's Mellllltiiiiiing.....

The snow is melting!! :) Can't wait for the ground to dry up so we can start pounding tires! (starting in probably May, depending on how fast the ground dries out after the snow melt); anyone wanting to join the ES build is welcome! Camping on site. 

Goat update: It will likely take us a while to get some proper fencing in place for the proposed goats. The new plan is to put up some goat-proof fencing (anyone who own a goat will tell me such a thing does not exist!) and then get a goat first thing next spring.

Spring Acreage Chores

This summer will be spent pounding tires, but there are so many other chores to get through:

1. Install vents in rabbitry (we're using one vent hole for the chimney tubing of the wood stove; we'd like to add two for regular air ventilation). Put controllable fans in them too so we can speed up the ventilation process when necessary.
2. Unhang all rabbit cages, redo insulation, and rehang rabbit cages. We tried to fix the insulation late last fall, but it seems we need to do a better job. Condensation is pooling in a few areas.
3. Possibly move the camper to a different spot on the property. Why? well......
4. Put up some posts and goat fencing. EEEkkk! Super excited about this! Last year we had weeds and all sorts of shrubs and grass growing like crazy. Our little push mower couldn't handle it. Tom had to buy a Scythe to deal with it (well, he didn't have to, but he had fun playing around with it). This year we're toying with the idea of getting two small (e.g. Pygmy) goats to keep everything at bay. The camper would be in the way, depending on how we do the fencing. 
5. Cob the rabbitry exterior. This can be done when we're too exhausted to pound tires.
6. Install a laundry line.
7. Install an internet pole. Right now we just have internet in the camper, and sometimes it's a little sketchy on cloudy days. It's through radio waves since we're "out in the boonies". An internet pole would mean more consistent internet.
   

   
   

So many babies! (Earthbag/conventional hybrid rabbitry update)

The rabbitry is getting up to 22 degrees Celsius on sunny days and hovering near zero at night. We plan to backburry it in the summer (2016) but until then we've stacked straw bales along the outside of the north wall. We had to put in a wood stove for cold nights to prevent the water in the automated watering system from freezing on cold nights (anything around -15 or less).

After a few baby-less months filled with false pregnancies, baby eating, and birthing outside of the baby basket, we've finally got some success. Lots of success. 

Baby basket #1---each one is a different colour! There's six all together. Hard to see them all because they were a little cold and all trying to dive deeper into their nest.

Baby basket #2---these ones are all white with some small grey/black spots.

 

This is Ditto. She had five babies but two rolled away from the group and died of cold over the first couple of days. They are born naked and the moms don't sit on them like hens do to their eggs, so they survive through insulation (straw, newspaper shredding, and fur the mom pulls out of herself) and through body warmth (they all huddle together and take turns being in the middle). In the first few days if one or two get separated from the main group of babies, they can quickly die of hypothermia unless they find their way back to the group. In this pic they're about 2 weeks old so they've got enough fur on them to stay warm (hence why they've more or less tossed all the insulation aside). Ditto is super protective of them and they are getting so much milk from her---they are huge compared to the other babies!

Baby basket #3---I am sooo hoping the orange/grey one is a girl!

Baby basket #4---Dora with her four little ones.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Thank you everyone for your support this summer on the beginning stages of our build near Rivers! Although we spent a good chunk of the summer waiting on contractors, and we got about 0.1% of the tire pounding we hoped to get done, we did accomplish a lot this year: we finished our rabbitry (place to house our rabbits), got a gravel road into our property all the way to the spot where our earthship will be, made a dugout that we plan to stock with trout fingerlings in the spring, made a flat spot for the earthship to go, bought a mobile home, made a flat gravel pad for the mobile home, put skirting up on the mobile home and put staircases at both doors, and got some initial concrete work done. Oh and pounded like 10 tires :) We're calling it for the season. We'll be spending the next few weeks winterizing things, and then we'll be back at it at full tilt in the spring! (No contractors to wait on next summer, just lots and lots and lots of tires to pound!) Hope everyone had a great long weekend :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am thankful for Tom, who just finished building our rabbitry (place to house our rabbits), with all the bells and whistles (even an automated watering system!) I had the day off so I got to come out and inspect the final product. Here he is showing the bunbuns how to use the water nipples (aka having fun spraying them with water until he lowered the water pressure).

Couldn't do gravity-fed so we are using an electric pump to pump the water up to the top, and then this disk de-pressurizes the water so that the water doesn't spray at 100km/h into the bunnies' faces. Tom re-did the insulation so that there's air space below the roof, with vents, and then rigid foam. We had enough space up there that we were able to re-use the pink stuff below all that, but it does mean now the top cage is right up against the ceiling. 

The water pump.pressurizer. Some of the pink insulation that needs to be thrown out...don't mind that.

Stacking straw bales behind the rabbitry for good measure. Can't have the water freezing in the pipes.

Doe in shadow. Majestic :)