Piglet Tank Hut
Just about nothing goes to waste. This used to be a 720 gallon poly tank but it developed a hole so someone gave it to us. We got four little piglet huts out of that tank by drawing and quartering it. The sections are small enough to make excellent easily moved piglet huts out on the pastures. The shelter provides shade and protection from intense rain. Generally the pigs like to be out in the open but sometimes they use the shelters. This was made much the same way that we made the much larger sow huts out of a damaged 2,000 gallon tank someone gave us.
Outdoors: 62°F/43°F 2″ Rain
Tiny Cottage: 67°F/65°F
Daily Spark: Puzzles have edges. Minds don’t.
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Walter, I, in the last 7 or 8 years, have delivered an aversion to plastic and fiberglass and all things melted and molded. It (I) is almost obsessive. (and I’m not that way, in general. I eat food off the floor, eat outdated purchased products, I let my tuna/mayo sandwich sit in the car for 4 hours before eating it. I eat home-made ice cream made with raw eggs.) BUT! I don’t want my food sitting in cheap plastic containers. I don’t want to drink water out of flimsy plastic bottles. I freeze our soups and vegetables in glass jars I wonder about all the plastic pots and coverings our bedding plants are exposed to. The plastics are so watered down, now a days, I’m thinking like into the 7th or 8th generation now . . . but I have to admit I need to research this. Do you have concerns of storing food or water in plastic? livestock feed in plastic bags or bins? your livestock living under plastic domes or drinking from plastic tubs. am interested in your and Holly’s thoughts on this subject.
My guess is you’re allergic to the release agent or something like that. There are also a number of volatile chemicals used in the plastics making. They dissipate over time but on fresh plastics can be quite strong. I notice these as I have a very sensitive sense of smell. Plywood also has this issue. Letting things sit out and age helps. A long time ago in a far away galaxy I did plastic engineering and chemistry. Plastics can be designed with out these problematic chemicals but there isn’t a lot of demand. Maybe that will change with people becoming more conscious of these issues.
Personally, I like glass, cast iron and stainless steel where possible. With plastics I like to let it age. An old tank like that one won’t have the same problems as something new, you can smell the difference. Then there is the old solution to pollution is dilution. This is how nature deals with it too. Lots of fresh air rather than living in tightly closed boxes.
Nance I echo Walters comment that plastics seem to get better in time. Its that new car smell stuff that they sell in a can to spray in old cars to make them stink like new cars. I don’t like the smell of new plastics either but I find once they air out for a year there is no problem. Just dont nuke it in the microwave as that releases bad chameicals.
Some years ago I used to brew my own beer, of which I was the chiefest fan. Typically, with four gallons of clean water, I used Grey Owl (top working, bottom settling,) Ale Yeast, 1/2 can Blue Ribbon Malt Extract, and five lbs. of cane sugar, with a pinch of salt and sometimes a cheesecloth bundle of extra hops. Had it down to 6 cents a quart and 13 percent at one point. Made me popular in City College in Santa Barbara.
Then I shared my method with a friend, who decided to do the double tank method, and used new, clean garbage cans as his initial vessels. He achieved a brew that would give you acute nausea immediately and three days of misery thereafter, with headaches and aftertaste. He’d done about one hundred gallons in his toxic batch, and had done the usual bottling with about a teaspoon of sugar per quart for carbonation, but gave it all to me, with my deep beds and other gardens, to “use in snail traps” It was a dry summer, entailing little snail trapping, and in early fall, four months after the donation to gastropod destruction, pouring sweat from deep bed work, I flung myself down on the cover of the old well tank that held that poisonous batch as well as my own successful brewing. slung an arm down, snagged a bottle, popped the top, guzzled, and froze, groaning. The label said I’d just ingested three days’ worth of misery. But it was delicious, there were no afterefects, and my stock of potable brew had just gone up by a whole bunch of gallons. Aging is good!!
Aging is good and you’re still aging to tell the tale!
Hi Nance,
Walter has told me that carpets are also an issue. He is very sensitive to the smell of new carpet (and hates it.) If the carpet ages, then it becomes “okay.”
One thing that Walter implemented in our house is that absolutely no plastics go into the microwave. Even if they say “microwave safe”. He explained that the microwave process exacerbates the leaching of chemicals into the food.