Lord, this has been a gorgeous few days, even by the standards of a very mild winter. (Sorry.)
It’s definitely not Spring yet, but I’m starting early with my annual attack of “I should pointlessly start a garden for the rabbits to eat.” All that lumber I cut up the other day included some packing frames mostly made of 1-by that’s just too nice to make kindling out of. Occurred to me I might try raised beds for once. So since most of them stayed intact when I pulled the frames apart, I kept them as long as I could. Waste not, want not.
The boys are so predictable. On cool sunny days Ghost always lies in the sun…
…and Little Bear always lies in the shade and pines for the fjords.
Took me two days, but I’m on top of the laundry at last. It always gets away from me in winter because the thicker clothing just doesn’t wash or rinse well in the sink. Finally got around to setting up a pail-and-plunger assembly line and that works a lot better. But you may have noticed it’s February, and most days that still seems a pretty good excuse not to wash clothes outdoors. Still, I did a bunch of sweatshirts yesterday that took all day and part of today to dry. This morning I started early with water I heated on the stove and got a week’s worth of socks and underwear out of the way, then once it warmed up I finished off the sweatshirts and jeans.
Joel, It will probaly kill you to drill holes in a perfectly good bucket but check out the laundry bucket setup at tinyhouses.com that looks pretty good of getting rid of the water in your clothes. I have added about a 1/4 of a cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle and it made the clothes a lot softer and the towels absorb water better when dry. I use the cheap white vinegar.
You might try straw bale gardening (google it) instead of raised beds. No need to lug in top soil (assuming you have any) and the critters don’t seem to climb up on the bales. I had a rabbit living in my garden last year and it never touched all the rabbit food just over it’s head. The straw is good for 3 years or so and after that it’s turned into garden soil.If you do manage to fence the bales off you can plant the sides as well and a few bales will do for you. Potatoes come out great as does all the root crops. Plant the sides in lettuce, etc.