Cottage Economy

Less than a year ago we posted on the prospect of us providing rain barrels to fill a niche in the market and a service to Mother Earth. That first full trailer of barrels was so exciting!

Well, alot can happen in a year-and we've come a long way baby!

This past Saturday Mia and I unloaded a semi-trailer load of barrels to the ill masked curiosity of the neighborhood. This was a BIG project-these barrels weigh over 100lbs each. Luckily barrels are designed to move easily (their, well, round) so despite having 4.5 tones of oak to handle we had them unloaded in 30 minutes with the help of the drivers and a simple ramp of 2x4's.

We have also made huge improvements in our production-I am on my third drill (an 8amp Bosh Hammer Drill that will try to snap your arms off if you aren't damn careful-do not ask how I know this) and have upgraded to carbide tipped hole saws and massive auger drills to save time. Mia in her first stab at making the intakes tripled the productivity of that task. So by noon we had the all unloaded, 70 of them in the garage, and 22 built. Of course we can hardly move today, but the accomplishment is impressive. Henry Ford would be proud, and once installed these 22 barrels will account for 40,000 gallons of runoff saved annually-when the batch is completely done by the end of the month it will be closer to 150,000 gallons. Nice.

Stumble It!