Posts Tagged ‘reuse’
Recycling Quest
Almost daily, two 6-foot lengths of polypropylene twine around a hay bale are getting cut in our barn and instantly become waste. That’s just at our place. Imagine how many get cut in the rest of the county and all the horse properties around the state. It does not feel right to me to have this end up in a landfill somewhere, or worse, forever floating in an ocean.
I checked locally for an option to recycle our accumulation of cut-up plastic twine and learned it isn’t financially feasible. The volume of twine that would need to be collected would end up costing more in handling than could be recovered if and when they could find a potentially interested party to accept it. The person I spoke with at our county encouraged me to search wider on the internet for other possibilities.
I thought I was searching for other collection options but I soon discovered a variety of ways other people were crafting uses for plastic bags and used bale twine.
To my skilled sisters, I thought you might appreciate how this person spins HDPE grocery bags into a cord that can then be knitted or crocheted into useful items:
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For bale twine, I was inspired by this video of uses that benefits horses:
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I started experimenting with braiding because the posts supporting our overhang often have horse hair caught in the splinters of the wood. Wrapping the posts with messy braids of plastic twine will be a great enhancement the horses can rub against with abandon.
It will require a LOT more braiding, but for each length of twine I can reuse, that’s one less ending up as trash.
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Updating Benches
The old log benches around the firepit up at the lake have aged to the point of being overly mossy and crumbling from decomposition. Another perfect opportunity for making use of the store of old lumber we saved from the resurfacing of our deck at home.
Elysa is up at the lake this weekend so I asked her to send me a photo of the benches as they looked yesterday.
It’s fitting to use leftover lumber because that’s how the original benches were made when the log home was built at the lake. Twelve-inch cedar log pieces made for excellent firepit seating.
My idea for replacements won’t be made of logs but they will have some cedar boards and be custom made.
I mixed in some green-treated boards for the added strength and weight to bolster the finished benches. After measuring the old log benches, I designed one tall one and a pair of shorter versions to match.
The results are satisfying and I look forward to testing them out by the lake next time we get a chance to drive them up. The simulated firepit on my driveway didn’t quite match the desired ambiance.
Gives me extra incentive to make the trek up to our favorite place as soon as possible!
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Reclaimed Materials
After leaving work early yesterday in order to ride up to the lake with Cyndie’s mom, we made quick work of slapping some shingles on the woodshed before the impending rain arrived. While still in the car, I watched a refresher video about shingling a roof. Then, I immediately disregarded the details about properly staggering the rows and made it up randomly as I went along.
It’s a shed for firewood, after all. Plus, the slant of the roof and the trees behind the shed make the rooftop hardly visible.
We were racing darkness, the dusk-related onslaught of mosquitos, and the dinner bell to achieve, at the very least, the top row before the evening rain started to fall.
I love that I was able to make use of old spare shingles from both our home and up here at the lake –two different colors. I think it contributes nicely to the rustic “at-the-lake” appearance of the structure.
The only materials I needed to purchase for this shed were the screws, the four concrete footing blocks, and a roll of roofing felt underlayment. All the lumber and shingles were reclaimed material retrieved from storage.
I still want to put the finishing touches on the peak and trim some edges to feel my work is complete. I can accomplish those after the rain stops.
All that needs to happen after that is to fill the shed with split firewood and it will look just perfect.
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Cooking Compost
Does horse manure attract flies?
Yes, it does.
It also cooks at over 160°(F) given the right conditions. Just the right amount of moisture, air, and shape of the pile trigger the microorganisms to go wild. Unfortunately, at that temperature and above, the microbes start to die off and the pile can go inert.
I did a little cooking of my own in the hot sun yesterday, working in front of the hay shed. I’m cutting up old cedar boards ripped off our deck to make a small woodshed for up at the lake place.
I’m creating a kit of cut boards that I can fit in my car for transport up north where the plan is to assemble it in place. It’s a little tricky because I tend to make design decisions as I go on my building projects. I’m wrestling with the mental challenge of envisioning each step in advance and knowing what pieces and precise dimensions I need for each step in the process.
I anticipate the assembly will stretch over several different weekend visits up north. As if we need excuses to spend more time at the lake in the months ahead.
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Wood Pavers
Over the weekend I processed the latest accumulation of pallets that I salvaged from work this winter, removing the blocks from the top for use as pavers on a stretch of trail prone to being muddy.
It frustrates me that the company that sends their equipment mounted to these pallets doesn’t want them back. The least I can do is find additional uses for them. I’ve already built an entire chicken coop out of dismantled pallets. My other common use has been to place them on the ground in the hay shed to allow airflow beneath stacked bales.
Unfortunately, we haven’t been stacking bales for a couple of years now. That doesn’t mean we won’t be doing that again in the future, should we have another chance to have horses on the property, so I need to keep some percentage in reserve.
I plan to offer up any growing surplus to the surrounding neighborhood. What farmer couldn’t use more pallets when they are free for the taking?
Most of the boardwalk that we already created out of the blocks is three-wide. I’ve decided to change things up now to cover more distance by placing them single-wide. We basically walk down the middle anyway, and the 4-wheeler is wide enough to straddle the boards so driving the trail won’t dislodge them.
I have to drive timidly over the existing portion of the “boardwalk” to limit the disruption.
Originally, I imagined the blocks would push down into the mud to become “grouted” in position, but that has only barely started to occur. Now I’m just waiting for decaying leaves to fill the seams between them. Hopefully, the wood won’t all rot before the blocks finally become more firmly seated in place.
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Neglected Properties
It’s a shame that the neighboring houses around ours have fallen to such neglect. It reflects badly on the value of our property. I wish those responsible would put in a little effort to maintain the integrity of their homes.
I think maybe birch bark isn’t the most durable choice for roofing material. That unit is probably a little drafty.
I’m going to light a fire under the owners to inspire them to make some repairs to those houses before the tenants start spreading bad rumors about our neighborhood.
After Sunday’s initial excitement of making progress on the garden terrace using reclaimed fence posts, Cyndie pointed out the creosote smell of the wood posts. It reminded her of the railroad tracks by her grandma’s house.
A little research has us both feeling disinclined to proceed with burying the chemically treated posts in the same dirt we plan to grow our future food.
It will be a lot more work, but I’ve suggested making a low retaining wall of rocks. A more feasible alternative that holds promise would be to use the cedar planks we removed from the deck last fall. Although much of the ends of those boards were rotting, there is probably enough solid wood to serve our purposes.
Whatever we end up choosing, I hope it will look classy enough to offset the derelict birdhouses around here that threaten to give this place a bad reputation.
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New Garden
Sunday afternoon launched our effort to create a new produce garden at Wintervale on the slope at the end of the driveway.
We plan to use old reclaimed wooden fence posts for a retaining wall that will create a terrace for a flat garden plot. There is space below it to add a second level farther downslope but we are going to start small. If all goes well, next year we can expand.
After my first challenge of devising a way to connect and secure all the posts, the more complicated next step involves installation of barriers to the local wildlife who are known garden pests. Cyndie wants me to bury hardware cloth to block burrowing critters. Great idea, in theory. A hassle to accomplish in reality.
I’m recommending Cyndie put in a giant hasta spread nearby to offer deer a more enticing alternative to leaping over the fence I plan to build. Then I can make that barrier primarily designed with rabbits in mind.
Cyndie got right to work breaking up the turf and confirming how much of our soil is clay. There will be a fair effort to doctor the soil toward maximizing the plant growth potential. Of course, there is a handy resource of composted manure available a short distance away, but she is talking about also adding some sand, too.
I’m just the muscle on this project. I’ll leave those decisions up to her for now.
Before calling it a day and heading in to shower, I snuck down to hook up the come-along winch to the pine tree stump to see if it would stand up straight.
Close enough for my purposes, of which I currently have none. Just seemed like something to do. I have a high suspicion it will tip again at the first trigger of high wind or excess moisture since the roots have all been thusly stressed and held for months in that previous lean.
That fact has me hesitant to plot any significant artistic endeavor for the stump until it has had time to settle in the upright position.
It is located beside Cyndie’s perennial garden, so carving it into a gnome seems like a great idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have any plan to learn how to carve a gnome out of a tree stump, so that most likely won’t happen.
If it stays standing for a year or so, I’ll have had plenty of time for inspiration to strike.
I’ll likely be busy fixing garden fencing in the meantime.
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Special Report
How many times do we have to hear the “special” announcements before we grow numb? I can’t answer that because I wasn’t counting last week when the numbness began to set in. During these “uncertain times” affecting everyone in the world, businesses that are scrambling to adjust are all issuing announcements of what they are doing to be safe, stay safe, help you, help others, unfortunately, to the point of becoming downright annoying.
It is my civic duty to assure all readers that Relative Something is striving to do everything possible to assure that all posts are maintaining a proper social distance and avoiding going to restaurants or concerts until this crisis is over. Epidemiologists are confident that reading blog posts is unlikely to pose unreasonable risks of transfer of the coronavirus, so feel free to spend extra time during your sheltering at home to visit the “Previous Somethings” archive to rediscover what the world was like before 2020.
Yesterday, in effort to clean up some of the mud-saster around here, Delilah and I –well, mostly me, she just sat nearby and stared toward the chickens in the woods– dismantled six pallets to reclaim enough lumber for extending the boardwalk on one of our trails by about seven rows.
You can see a difference one day makes when it comes to spring snow. The white stuff has melted, but that leaves behind a wet, muddy mess for trail conditions.
Actually, it was frozen this morning due to low overnight temperatures, so we hauled a wheelbarrow full of the blocks down into the woods before breakfast. The reward for that effort resulted in a special condition on Delilah’s hairy legs that I call “mudcicles.”
The doggie towels we keep at the front door for drying her feet when we come in from a walk aren’t able to wipe off all the frozen mud stuck in the long hairs on the back of her legs. That tends to slowly melt off around the house over the following hour after we come in.
Luckily, since I am home alone and am not able to host any guests during the pandemic crisis, I simply pretend not to notice how gross the house is becoming. When I try communicating with others in the world via Zoom or FaceTime, I just make sure to keep the camera pointing well above the floor.
Rest assured, despite the thin coating of silt covering every flat surface of the house, the risk of transmission of the coronavirus continues to remain unlikely.
Stay safe while washing your hands everyone!
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Keep Going
I’m on a roll and enjoying the fact that momentum from my recent decluttering success has me suddenly expanding the effort to reach items that have sat untouched for almost six years.
With my closet in the bedroom clean, and the drawers in my dresser unstuffed, I went on to tackle the pile of papers and odd collection of pocket leftovers that get dumped on the inviting flat expanse of the dresser top.
Included in the stack was the form for renewing my passport that I had filled out four months ago. That form was awaiting a headshot photo that met the specific requirements for dimensions and quality. It took a little while for Cyndie and me to find the right background to take the photo ourselves. Once that was done, I needed to print it on photo paper. That provided another easy opportunity for delay.
Friday, that renewal form finally made it to the post office and all that dresser top debris has now been dispatched to logical organized locations.
That accomplishment helped to fuel continued momentum that took me back out into the shop where there is now a glorious new open space where the foosball table top once stood. On the right side of the image above, there is a box against the wall that has been sitting there since we settled in here back in 2012.
We had removed three hanging light fixtures from the basement and I packaged them up to sell or give away. It’s just one of those things I didn’t get around to finishing that the box sat there untouched all this time.
Yesterday, I opened up the box, removed all the mouse-chewed bits of cardboard and packing paper, threw away the stash of acorns the rodents stowed, and laid out the light fixtures to take pictures for an ad.
They’re out there in the Craigslist universe now, hoping to find a new home.
And I am going to keep going.
I think I will finally throw out that old tattered seat I replaced on the lawn tractor that sold last month. I had placed the ripped vinyl seat back into the same box the new had come in. The tractor is gone, but I still have the throw-away seat left over from it. Really?
Boy, I gotta say, this decluttering progress is a real feel-good endeavor.
No wonder I’ve become so inspired to keep going.
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Trail Inspirations
After a second visit on Saturday for pure maple syrup and pancakes, Cyndie enlisted the artistic energies of visiting Williams girls, Ella and Sarah, to decorate some of the new blocks before we placed them on the trail.
It’s a bit of a shame that their designs will all too quickly be subject to the abuses of plodding muddy boots and paws, but that won’t stop the creative exclamations from still offering glimpses of inspiration to passersby.
The 60 new blocks paved another 8.5 feet of sloppy trail, but we’re still going to need a lot more pallets if we want to cover the length of perpetually wet ground down there.
The picture I used yesterday to show the blocks on the trail was from October of 2016. Yesterday, Cyndie took a picture with the newest blocks in the foreground, which is actually viewing in the opposite direction from the first image.
It’s not an exact comparison, but I like seeing one next to the other.
Can you see how far in the distance the old blocks run in the picture on the right?
2016
2018
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Reminds me a little of the yellow brick road. Oh my!
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Relative Something 