For Christmas, Tai bought me 4 Californian Meat Pen rabbits (three does and a buck) and built rabbit hutches from recycled materials. They live off fresh water, garden clippings and food from the local coop.

 We use their waste for our compost pile. Additionally, we plan to use them for meat, or discover we don't have the hearts to be socially responsible meat eaters. Once we get the operation going, we will also be selling our adolescents and teaching others who are interested in rabbitry. 

We bought our rabbits from a local breeder. We keep them in four separate cages. Tai built the hutches from some 2x4s, crates, screen, wire, sheet metal roofing, an old grill, nails and a staple gun.  Our original cage had just two compartments: one for the does, one for the buck (you have to keep them separated). The door of first two cages is made out of an old grill. It makes it look like bunny jail, but it is much more effective than the screen doors on the two new cages. Underneath the cages, we wedged the sheet metal roofing so that it is a bit easier to gather the rabbit waste to add to our compost for the garden. 

Once the rabbits became breeding age, we expanded the cages, one cage for each of the four original rabbits. In the female cages, we built nesting boxes out of wood. We give them tons of hay so that they can nest accordingly.

We recently started breeding the rabbits. Now the cages are filled with baby bunnies, bunny parents and pregnant bunnies. They have been a lot of fun to care for, but I do not look forward to having to say goodbye. It has been a fun learning experience and so far we have had a lot of success with rabbitry. 

When looking at our backyard garden, it is crazy to see how many things have been reused. I am lucky because my husband, Tai, works in landscaping and irrigation. As a result, he drives around all day doing service calls and often picks up items discarded on the side of the road. When I was little, my dad used to do the same thing. I would get so irritated and embarrassed, but now I understand the social value of this type of behavior. For instance, look at our rabbit hutches:

Tai built them from left over crates, sheet metal and a barbecue pit found on the side of the road. 

We also built our tomato supports from fence posts collected from when our neighbors rebuilt their fence:

We just moved the fence posts next to our row of tomatoes. We drilled holes in the posts and draped cotton string every foot. I weave the tomato limbs between the strings so they are held up off the ground.

Tai also has a deal set up with fellow garbage collectors. He trades random metal pieces for iron fence posts. We use these, along with bamboo we harvest from a neighbor’s yard, to hang the netting for beans and crawling spinach:

So many things in our garden come from other people’s trash. It just goes to show so many things people throw away can be used for productive purposes.