The proliferation of trash turned to cash reality shows on television makes you afraid to throw away anything.  Recently my son decided accumulation in our main service barn since 1968 needed thinning.  Part of me applauded his enthusiasm and energy, the other wondered if something of great value might be hidden among worn-out tires, dried out fan belts for a long forgotten tractor, or odds and end bolts.  So he started excavation of the barn, and I almost hoped some roaming picker might stop and offer thousands for soon discarded junk.

They say archeologists learn of the past from cultures trash piles.  In the same strange way, I saw my son learning about his grandfather’s farming practices from the layers of debris and accumulated parts and pieces.   He learned his grandfather and father never knew quite what they should discard.  They maintained a penchant for worn refrigerators.  The wall lined with a timeline of refrigerator colors.  They stood as an appliance graveyard intended on storage.  Belts housed­­ in the freezer, filters in the refrigerator, and odd parts in the produce drawer seemed a terrific solution for an airtight storage.  In theory yes, in practice, the parts, belts and filters took on the out of sight out of mind proposition.  Then the hooks with the great purchase in 1979 of tractor belts that became dried out, and the tractor they were intended long sold off. 

But ever hopeful that a model T Ford, a classic car, a refurbished two cylinder tractor got lost in the passage of time and willy-nilly scrap lumber and metal tossed into corners.  Where I hoped they might find some long forgotten folk art treasure, they found empty paint cans. I waited with anticipation of a vintage bicycle in almost pristine condition, and they found a three speed bike from my college days; too old to fix, and too new for vintage.  The only furniture that came out of the hidden recesses was an old Case Steel desk and a desk chair that kept generations of field mice happy.

The size of the barn, long debated began to take on dimensions forgotten since the first blueprint made its appearance.  The son’s amazement grew with each load taken to recycling or the dump.  Hidden corners stacked with lumber and scrap metal unfortunately didn’t hide a vintage vehicle or artistic treasure, but offered space.  So much space, the daughter in-law managed to park her car in the barn for a change.  Finally it reached the barn  looked like a woman with a face lift; restored and rested.   The refrigerators disappeared down to only the working models.  The filters, belts, and parts found a new home, easily seen, not forgotten so soon.  The workbench previously cluttered with discarded bolts and washers now could be used without chunking clutter to the side..    Now the barn is ready for another 40 years of farming and savings. 

In the end we found no valuable assets, other than the scrap value of some of the refrigerators and metal.  There were no treasured artifacts waiting for a museum, or vintage vehicles, other than the broken down lawn mower.  Space reflected from every corner, where lumber and useable metal were stacked, easily accessible and recognized.  The one valuable thing found was more sentimental than ready for a collector to write a big check, was a great grandfather’s old-fashioned scythe used years ago for cutting wheat.   I guess some people’s barns are meant for finding treasurers, ours is for collecting stuff to be discarded in some distant time.

www.nbran.org 

www.southwindphotography.com 

I just hate to throw away things that could be re-used!  Awhile back I realized that my husband's office was throwing away about a trash bag full of shredded papers per week.  This seemed like a waste to me, so he started bringing them home.

3 Bags of Paper Shreds Were Heading to the Dumpster 

At first I was just adding them to our compost bin when it looked too wet, and they were working great, but he was bringing them home faster than I could use them.  One day we needed bedding in our large dog crate.  We used the paper shreds and the wheels in my head started turning! 

Recently, I needed to add more bedding to the deep litter in our goat barn.  Usually I use wheat straw, old hay or pine shavings, but instead I had a great idea!

Say "Hi" to Daisy the Goat! 

It now looks like it snowed in the barn, but the goats have fresh, clean, soft bedding, and 3 bags of paper shreds didn't go to the landfill and are now on their way to becoming great compost.  Score one for me!  My mom is now also saving her shreds for me and I'm thinking about asking for a shredder for Christmas.  If you have paper shreds that need a use, why not use them in your barn or as mulch in your own garden!  They are a wonderful, but often forgotten resource.

The moral of the story is to really think before you throw things away!  Your trash may just be a country girl's delight!

Oh, and yes, in case you were wondering, I am so thrifty that I carefully untied the bags and later stashed them under the kitchen sink to be re-used in the trash can!     

Update:  The shreds have been down in both the barn and the chicken coop for more than a month now, and I have been adding more as I get them.  They are well mixed in with the other litter and the barn is a dry as I have seen it.  Whenever it looks a little too compacted, I just throw a couple of handfuls of scratch out and the chickens fluff it right up!    

Thanks for stopping by!  Don't forget to check out the  Green Eggs and Goats  blog to see what else we have going on and to  *like* us on Facebook.  We would really *like* that!  

Why is it I got more projects completed today when the weather was crappy than on a nice sunny day. It was in the mid-fifties but we have a sustained wind of 40 with gusts higher. I got the chicken coop cleaned and ready for winter with a new pile of straw. I used my chicken tractors for most of the summer so to do selective breeding and to keep the birds out of my garden, but I don’t think the chickens would do well in the tractors during a South Dakota winter. It would be too harsh, so after I was done in the garden I let the chickens out. They do very well in the traditional coop during the winter. I tend to get cleaning the coop out on my to-do list twice a year. Being free range chickens they do not spend a great deal of time in the coop; mainly at night, in the morning before I let them out (I close it up each night), laying eggs and if the weather is bad (if they are smart enough to come in out of the weather). The coop is 13’ by 13’ old style. This morning I kept having to put off the job because I had hens that wanted in to lay eggs. I figured I had better let them do their business since I had to deliver eggs later that afternoon.  Later in the morning when I could finally get into the coop and started the grand process of shoveling out manure and straw, I still had one little white hen sneaking in. I told her that she could do her business and I would keep to mine. It must have worked since she hopped up into a nesting box and got to work. She did however keep a close eye on what I was doing and clucked a protest when I stopped working to take a phone call. Funny, the person who called never said a word about the noisy hen in the background. I hung a cabinet in the coop to store my heat lamps and such in. I am hoping it will save me from having to search for them next spring. I tossed in only 1 bale of straw but will add more each week. It will keep it from getting packed and all messy. I broke it open and left the scattering to the chickens. I have seen them scatter a large round bale that was still tied.   

When I wasn’t working on the chicken coop today, I was building the dog kennel. Someone had given me some kennel panels which wire was all broken and messed up. I had a roll of chain link fencing  that had been left on a rental property of mine that I used to replace the kennel panel wire. I now have a 12’ by 12’ dog kennel for free. We normally only have the dog locked up at night or when little kids are visiting. She is still under a year old and has a lot of puppy in her. We don’t want her to run off or knock a child over.   

My husband, Rick and I went to a hospital surplus auction last Saturday. Rick and I have always enjoyed auctions, but this one turned out to be a hoot. I picked up 6 bookcases (hello organized pantry and basement), 11 lamps (only needed 2 but had to get lot), a desk, misc tables, and an elevator door. I thought it was a stainless steel countertop, but hey it works. Rick used his surgical table (purchased at same auction) with lift hydraulics and my elevator door to make a butchering table that can be raised or lowered and is stainless steel.  I tried unsuccessfully to get a housekeeping cart (envisioned a portable potting bench and a crash cart (portable scrapbooking station. Hey we all have vices). Rick also grabbed a 7’ by 7’ commercial refrigerator/cooler (for hanging and storing meat we butcher), a commercial oven with stainless steel top and office chair. It was a very productive sunny Saturday afternoon.   

I am almost done with canning tomatoes. I think I only have about 21 qts left, which is good since I only have 11 qt jars left. Guess I had better wrestle some up since I have tomatoes, and new potatoes to can.   

The goats and calf are done with cleaning up the garden. I have to move them across the driveway to clean up the field corn field, but to do that I will need to get another electric fence up. Hopefully next week, it will get done. Projects, projects and more projects!!  

You know how some people don’t tie down there loads and things fly out along the road. My father is not one of those. In fact he’s quite the opposite. He’s one of the guys that will be driving at 55 mph and come to a complete stop on the shoulder, throw it in reverse and pick up all sorts of treasures. He’s most famous for the red load flags that fall of log trucks. He’s got quite a collection of them. But he’s picked up a lot of other things too, tools, chains, binders and the crème’ del la crème’ an extension cord on a reel that my mother has used for years. I have picked up Dad’s habit. I’ve collected my share of binders, gas cans and breaker bars. But the oddest thing I’ve actually picked up was a roll of barbed wire last summer.

My husband and I were working in the middle of nowhere, a place called Paulina. (For those of you not familiar with Oregon you go to Post, which is the center of the state and head east.) The landscape is similar to any of a number of Western states: rolling hills, sagebrush and junipers with a few antelope scattered here and there. We were headed for the job site but had to pass through a long construction site where they were widening the road. As we drove we noticed that they were replacing the entire fence along the road. We passed one huge roll of wire and I told Hubby that we should stop and get it. He was mildly skeptical but didn’t give me an absolute no. We passed another roll and I just looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He smiled at me. Next we passed the lone fence builder. “Stop.” I told Hubby. He stopped. But he drew the line at asking the rancher for the wire. He told me if I wanted the wire, I had to ask.

I was mildly embarrassed, but I figured I’d never see the guy again, so what could it hurt? The rancher looked at me with one of those long quiet looks that I read as “What on earth is this stranger up to.” Nevertheless he was happy to get rid of the wire. He waved me off and I hopped back in the pickup.

The next roll we came to, Hubby and I hopped out and rolled it out of the ditch, onto the road and up to the tailgate. We put the tailgate down and wondered what we were going to do next. We had the generator, tools and the dog already crammed into the bed of the pickup. We hefted the circle of barbs onto the tailgate. The dog scrambled on top of the tool box and eyed us with reproach. With a lot of pokes and snags we wrangled the wire on top of all of the other stuff, shut the tailgate, and got back in the pickup. Hubby just shook his head and laughed. “You’re not gonna run out of wire for a long time.”

But in fact, I just ran out of that roll this month. “What,” you might ask, “does she do with all that old rusty wire? I make wreaths and flowers and angels and snowmen and any number of decorations with them. Who buys them, you ask? More people than you might think . I spent the first weekend of this month at our local Christmas Craft Fair. It’s an annual event that draws people from all over our county. And I sold a lot of barbed wire.

It is funny to watch the people. Women love my stuff, they put it in their garden, buy it for their friends, decorate their houses with it. But the men, they just don’t get it. They walk by my booth and shake their heads. That is until one man came in and started studying the barbs. Now some people might think that barbed wire is all the same. But it isn’t. There are two barbs and four barbs and barbs that are cut out of metal and barbs that are short pieces of wire and there are twisted and single strands and the list goes on. Different parts of the country use different kinds, and over the years changes in manufacturing have changed the styles.

All of this I knew. I even knew that there were people that collected barbed wire. I’ve seen displays of wire on large pieces of plywood with labels and the whole bit. Even with all of that knowledge I was still surprised when this gentleman asked me if I was a member of the Barbed Wire Society. I gave him one of those blank – “say what” stares. I couldn’t believe that people were that serious about their barbed wire. I mean I have two barbed wire angels on my front porch and a barbed wire star in my bathroom and rolls of it piled beside the shop and I’m pretty sure that’s not normal, but to actually be a member of a society for barbed wire and to go to conventions? That’s just -- well, I guess I don’t know what that is.

But I must say that barbed wire is a great medium for decorating. It’s cheap, recyclable, easily found, requires no maintenance and
can be used either indoors or out. And unlike traditional Christmas wreaths, they won’t wilt and you can leave them up year round. If you need some inspiration for your own decorations, I’ve provided some photos of my own works.

Freezing temperature not withstanding, I set to work on the chicken-house-from-recycled-materials bright and early last Saturday. It was a beautiful, clear morning, and since the wind was calm, the cold wasn’t difficult to take. Within a couple of hours, the temperature was in the 50s.

The first order of business was to frame the human-door end of the house. I used more scrap 2x6 material for that. Next, I cut and installed three purlins across the rafters. The purlins were roughly 1x6, although some boards were flitch sawn, so they followed the curves of the tree that provided the lumber. I needed roofing metal in pieces about 5 feet long, so I headed back to the pushed-in shed with a crowbar and brought several long pieces up to the barn to cut. My el-cheapo power sheet-metal shears made the cuts, although the old steel roofing is corrugated so it wasn’t as quick as it might have been. I used six pieces of roofing, and it went on without a hitch.

With the roof on, my attention turned to the human and chicken doors. Since this was supposed to be a project that used things we had on hand, my first task was to locate sufficient hinges. It took a while, but eventually, I found a box of old garage door hinges in the barn’s loft and picked out five. Next, I cut and hung the doors. I used an old piece of machinery chain to hold the chicken door open and an old homemade steel handle for the human-door latch.

The finishing touches, other than painting, included cutting and installing 1x4 and 1x3 material for the corner trim and knocking together a perch inside the house. I also cut 4-inch diameter hand holes for outside access to the nesting boxes. I haven’t created the “doors” for those yet, but I will soon.

Since the Kubota loader tractor is even more buried this week than last week, I decided to try something unconventional to move the chicken house to the chicken yard. I know the folks at Polar Trailer  won’t recommend using their heavy-duty tandem trailers as jacks and house-moving dollies, but I can tell you that the trailer performed flawlessly as the primary tool for moving this 700-pound house.

Within minutes of setting the new chicken house, the hens were curious. Within an hour they had begun to claim it. During chores this morning, I heard a hen laying an egg in it. I can’t wait to paint both the chicken house and Mulefoot pig house … green with red roofs and white trim. Hopefully I’ll have at least one additional warm day to get that done this season.

Photos courtesy of Kate Will.

Lingering scent of skunk not withstanding, I was up bright and early last Sunday to see how far I could get with the chicken-house-built-from-scraps project I started Saturday.

The house’s base was constructed with 2X6 dimensional lumber and ¾-inch plywood. It was an entrance ramp in its former life, after all. We made the nest boxes with some ½-inch plywood (painted green on one side), some once-lovely spruce molding, and slats that once decked a pallet. I used exterior-grade “drywall” screws and roofing nails to do the nest-box fastening.

The first step on Sunday was to attach the nesting box structure to the floor with a couple of 2x4 cleats screwed to both the floor and the nest box. Next, I attached a 4x8 sheet of ¾-inch plywood (green paint side out) to the back of the house. I screwed it to the edge of the platform and the nest box, and I built a non-conventional 2x6 frame for the back wall and attached it to the floor and the back wall. You might be wondering why I am using 2x6 lumber for the framing … it is simply that we have about a ton of lovely used 2x6s, 2x8s and 2x12s stacked in the barn … and not a single full-length 2x4 in sight.

I found two matching storm windows stashed in the corner of the barn’s loft and framed them fairly conventionally into the front wall before screwing the works to the platform. With top plates and rafters in place, I installed more of the green-painted plywood on the end wall where the nest boxes are located. By the time evening set in, I had the front wall sided with green plywood, too.

All that’s left now is to side the end opposite the nest boxes, frame the human door and install it, install perches, build the chicken door and ramp, and roof it. With any luck I will accomplish that next weekend … and hopefully it will be warm enough to do a little painting, too.

Part 3 of this adventure will hopefully appear early next week.

Photos are once again courtesy of my sweet bride Kate Will.

Last Saturday, after moving the Mulefoot pig house to the pigs’ paddock, I noticed that we hadn’t put much of a dent in the pile of lumber and other miscellanea in the barn. I was considering spending the rest of the day sitting and watching the pigs, chickens and cattle, but Kate wondered whether I might spend the time more productively by building, or at least starting, a chicken house.

I had tripped over the remnants of a wooden ramp (that once connected the mudroom door with the garage) enough times that I decided to use it as the base upon which to build the structure. Of course, the bulky piece was wedged between the box blade on the Kubota’s 3-point hitch and the barn foundation. After a bit of jockeying and levering, I managed to free the platform and tipped the heavy wooden structure up on edge. This would have been uneventful if the terriers and I didn’t just happen to be staring face to face with a couple of startled skunks who had been huddled beneath it.

After a quick assessment of the situation, I decided to lower the platform to the ground before taking the skunks’ fury full-force in the face. I was so hurried that I trapped Woodrow, the Cairn terrier beneath the structure, right along with them. Knowing that Kate would get after me if I let Woodrow battle two skunks alone, I lifted the platform again, narrowly missing the aromatic spray as I propped it with a stick. Woodrow, in a rare moment of obedience, headed out of the barn on my heels.

The scent wasn’t altogether unpleasant at first. It had tinges of musk, onion and other sulfur-containing compounds. As its power dissipated somewhat, and my over stimulated olfactory nerves calmed down, the smell was, well, very skunky.

Since I really wanted to get the chicken house started, I went back into the barn with a 12-foot-long stick. I peeked over the box blade. No skunks. After a bit of investigating and poking, I discovered that the skunks had moved to the space behind the old Allis-Chalmers combine pickup, left leaning against the wall by the farm’s previous owner. In spite of the smell, I horsed that old piece of ramp outside and set to work.

The first task was to spray some of that de-skunking solution on the underside of the ramp to make the work bearable. And it did.

Kate and I managed to install four short legs beneath the platform and cobble a nest box together before it became too dark to see. By the time we packed up the tools, Lucy the Westie and Woodrow had visited the skunks’ new hideout often enough to wear the badge. Luckily, we had plenty of that magic de-skunk formula left and gave them a good going over. It worked again.

Part 2 coming tomorrow, hopefully .

Photos courtesy Kate Will.

Last Saturday was one of those days when I woke up knowing exactly what I was going to do. I had been mulling pig shelter designs for the past couple of weeks … this mulling usually takes place around 2:07 a.m. when the dogs join the local coyote chorus and wake me up. What I decided on was a low, floorless shed that would be relatively easy to move around and that could be stuffed with straw for our little Mulefoot pigs to make into whatever kind of bed they desired.

During one of those sleepless early morning sessions, I mentally inventoried all the used lumber accumulated and left behind by the farm’s former owner. My initial reaction to all the wood was negative … the stacks are messy, and I loathed the idea of removing them from the barn and burning them. But that particular sleepless morning, I realized that we had everything in the barn that I would need to build the pig palace … everything except the roofing, that is. But as luck would have it, the sagging metal-roofed shed that the insurance company made me push in (it was a liability hazard, don’t you know) was still in a heap inside its limestone wall foundation, and most of the 12-foot tin roofing panels were relatively intact.

In a nutshell, this pig house began with a topless shipping crate turned upside down. I cut away part of the front framing to make room for the opening and clad it with some exterior-grade plywood I found … it was painted green on one side, so I installed it green side out. I screwed three purlin-like affairs to the bottom of the crate (roof side) to support and provide purchase for the metal roof. After careful consideration, I decided that 6-foot-long pieces of roofing would be ideal. I used this as an excuse to purchase my first power sheet-metal snips. They only had an el-cheapo version at Tractor Supply, so try as I might to add another Milwaukee tool to my chest, I paid less than $50 for a more or less disposable version. It worked just fine though, and who knows how many times I will really need to cut a lot of sheet metal.

Kate gave me a hand with this project, and she was invaluable as an extra set of hands, photographer, general morale booster and moving contractor. Since I haven’t had the Kubota loader tractor out of the shed for a while, it is kind of buried … lazy old me didn’t want to un-bury it to move the completed pig house to the pig paddock. So with Kate’s help again, we tipped the entire house onto a little foldable garden cart called the Fold-A-Cart and even though the house’s weight caused the cart's tires to compress to almost flat, we rolled the shelter into place in no time.

After stuffing the house with straw and placing the pigs’ dog-crate inside, the growing Mulefoot hogs began to investigate. By the time the temperature had dipped below freezing, they were nestled, four-abreast, inside the dog crate, inside their new house, with the straw all neatly arranged.

Who ever heard of building a palace for $49.99 and a couple of boxes of fasteners? In time, we plan to freshen up the green paint and paint the roof with Rustoleum … Kate wants the roof to be red. What do you think?

I’ve acquired a concrete corbel. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with it; right now it sits in one of the gardens and it just might end up staying there, filling up a hole where nothing is growing at the moment. I didn’t purchase the corbel; someone else had set it out for the trash.

Yes, I admit it, I’m a trash collector. I pick up junk that no one wants, and sets out on the side of the road for the garbage trucks. “Junque" is the word I prefer – ok, so it’s pronounced the same as “junk,” but it looks better ... more chic; less trashy maybe. And admitting I collect it is actually not much of an admission because everyone knows it. Even my boss, who used to laugh and scoff at the idea of picking up stuff by the side of the road, will come back from a job site with something in hand; a door from a barn, a piece of statuary or pottery the client didn't want anymore – all sorts of stuff. Sometimes the junque he brings me is even too junky for me and it ends up in the dumpster, and sometimes he'll tell me there's junk in the dumpster, and I should go take a look. He’s the one that brought me the corbel ... along with a couple of pots for his wife, and an only slightly rickety, but otherwise in good condition Adirondack chair for another co-worker.

My friend calls this junque "Ju-ju," and it is usually prefaced with the adjective "good" when she speaks of it. She has alerted me to it's presence by phone announcement, like some Blue-Light Special coming over the intercom at K-Mart, "Good ju-ju on the corner of Cherry and Superior - you better get there quick," which means she's already picked through it. There are certain things I always look for, and can not resist: any type of container that I can use as a planter, old wooden furniture, and solid wood paneled doors – a bonus if the fancy old iron hinges and doorknobs are still attached. My door collection is a running joke with my husband, Keith. He says the doors are cluttering up his garage, and wonders what I am going to do with them all? I don’t know; someday I’ll find a use for them ... maybe. Until then they’re not taking up that much space.

I rarely visit yard sales or flea markets; it’s just not the same thrill as finding something that’s already been discarded, and then dragging it home. As my daughter, Shelby once said, "Mom, yard sales are just Ju-Ju with a price tag." Junque is free; free is good.

Hard-good materials are often the greatest expense in garden projects. Brick, stone, and concrete are pricey. Add a few pieces of garden ornament, and the bill gets even larger. High costs can be avoided by using recycled materials: old bricks, broken concrete, even pieces of curbing. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of discarded old bricks edge my gardens. Wooden furniture, pottery, an old farming implement, (my ninety year old neighbor says it's a potato planter), eventually made it out of the garage or basement and into the yard – much to my garage-space impaired husband’s relief.

I’ve used some of these collected pieces of trash as a solution to a problem area of the yard. What’s the quickest way off a side-door stoop? When you’re a kid, it’s not down the steps; it’s jumping off the side – right into a small patch of asparagus, chives, and parsley. This little add-on to the main vegetable garden not only created a nice landing zone for the girls jumping off the stoop in order to cut across the backyard, the ninety degree angle from one garden to the next was difficult to mow.

I used a slated wooden piece, the two halves held together with a strip of rubber sandwich-board style. (I have no idea what its original purpose was – I just picked it up off the side of the road because it looked interesting.) Keith painted it white, and I secured the piece into the ground with landscape staples and used an old porch newel as the corner piece. The “picket fence” stops the girls from jumping off the stoop and into the asparagus patch. Broken concrete pavers and pieces of old curbing, with the cracks between filled with sand, dubs as faux flagstone, takes care of the hard-to-mow angle, and makes a nice place a place to set potted plants.

This spring’s junque project was my daughters’ idea. They wanted a secret garden, and drew a plan to turn our 2/3 acre ravine into a wondrous, enchanted place with stone paths leading to hidden garden rooms, multi-tiered waterfalls, and a tree-house with enough turrets to rival Ludwig’s Castle.

What they got was a 12 x 12 corner of the ravine under a maple tree. This consists of a “flagstone” sitting area made from broken concrete pavers fitted together, surrounded by divisions of hosta, lady’s mantle, black-eyed susans, and daylilies. The top of a bird bath missing its base, sets on an over-turned pot. An American elderberry is planted in a retaining wall made with a semi-circle of brick that was once part of an old well I dragged home, and a Gro-Lo fragrant sumac cascades down the slope. A permanently open wrought-iron “gate” was made from the two separated halves of a corner plant stand that I dismantled, and welcomes one through the entrance. The border is lined with boulders from a neighbor’s father’s quarry. Cannas and potted annuals fill out the area until the perennials fill in.

Plans to expand the small garden are set for next year ... or as soon as we find another piece of junque to add to it. The whole garden cost nearly nothing – even the plants were free; divided or moved from other areas of the yard. The rewards of seeing my girls work together to come up with a plan, watching my youngest, Shannon, as she helped plant with me, and spending an afternoon with Shelby at local antique markets scouting out a bench, (the garden’s only expense: $15.00), was priceless.

So next time you come across some junk set out as trash, stop and take a look. Ponder how it could be used in your garden. Can’t come up with a plan on the spot? Take it home and ponder some more. Store it in your garage until your spouse threatens to set it out for the garbage truck, and if you still can’t figure out what to do with it, send it my way. One person’s trash is another woman’s junque.