A .09-ACRE HOMESTEAD
(Page 3 of 4)
Of course, climbing to the roof with a water bucket or hose
in tow got old pretty fast, so I devised a homemade
drip-irrigation system. I tied a length of inexpensive
garden hose over each of our two rows of buckets, joined
those—using a Y connector—to a third hose, and
ran that to the nearest water outlet. After plugging the
ends of the two "bucket" hoses, I drilled holes in the
underside of the tubing, positioning one opening above each
container, then wrapped a rag around the hose at each of
these points to diffuse the water's erosive force. The
crude system does work, although the water pressure drops
toward the end of each hose and the drilled holes vary
slightly in size, so some buckets tend to be overwatered,
while others stay a bit too dry. Endless fine-tuning has
alleviated, but not completely solved, this problem.
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Despite that sort of headache, our combined indoor and
outdoor gardening efforts (we also have two homemade
"windowsill greenhouses") reward us with at least half of
the green vegetables we consume annually and enough
tomatoes to last us six or seven months out of each year.
Not bad for a total of about 200 square feet of cultivated
area!
LIMITED-SPACE LIVESTOCK
No homestead (even one that occupies less than a tenth of
an acre) would be complete without critters. So, with
confidence buoyed by our gardening successes, we bought
some New Zealand white rabbits from a reputable breeder and
installed them in wood-and-wire hutches we'd built after
reading an article in MOTHER NO. 6. Unfortunately, the
hutches just didn't work out for us. Not only were they
more expensive (probably as a result of the rise in lumber
prices) than ready-made all-wire cages would have been,
they were downright impossible to keep clean. Worse yet,
our rabbits soon discovered that they could chew right
through the wood. We junked one of the hutches, converted
the other into a small woodshed, and made four all-wire
cages. These are sheltered under a shed framed with 2 X
4's, with black roofing-paper walls on three sides and a
scrounged aluminum roof. The pens are hung from the
framework—one pair above the other—with sloping
trays of waterproofed plywood beneath each of the two upper
cages. A vinyl-laminated fabric curtain serves to close off
the front of the shed.
The new hutches have worked out well for us, but despite
the reputation rabbits have for procreation, ours haven't
always cooperated. I've raised (and had to cull) at least
four "chaste" females... those ladies absolutely refused to
breed. Still, we've produced 420 pounds of dressed rabbit
meat over the past six years. Based on expenditures for
feed, the meat has cost us about $1.20 per pound. We also
place value, of course, on the fact that this meat is
organically raised and free of antibiotics and artificial
hormones. The children eat the rabbit enthusiastically,
too. In fact, Scott, our six-year-old, often watches the
butchering and never seems to tire of the on-the-spot
anatomy lessons.
