"DO More, With LESS"

To some folks scrap iron is scrap iron . To me it is a valuable piece of metal that I haven’t figured out where to use it YET :relaxed:

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Exactly Wayne. I saved all the used tin I didn’t use on my shed. Next thing you know I’m making bird houses for the wife to sell at the flea market. I use scraps of scraps for other things around here. I now have people dropping off scrap for me.

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I hear ya, but there come’s a point when a piece of tin is ready to go to the scrap yard. When you build barns for a living you end up with more pieces than you could ever use. Then there’s the Old burn barrels, matted wire and crushed bicycles. Also, there’s a difference between “scrap iron” and a bunch of shred-ables. You won’t find me hauling off much that’s worth using. Not sure how many bird houses I could make out of a week’s worth of drops from the minibarn shop…It just piles up and up and up. And then there’s next week and the week after that and then another and another. If I get time to build bird houses there’ll be a pile of scrap tin around in any of 28 colors. But I do save most everything. About 3 months ago we built a 48 x 70 pole shed using all scrap metal. It looks like Joseph’s coat from the air but it keeps the rain off all my other scrap goodies. I think the heaviest thing in that load is an old stolen rusted out news paper box the boys drug out of a river at their grandparent’s house a couple years ago.

We keep a tank out by the produce stand with a sign on it. People drop off their scrap there. Others call us when they get a big load or just dump it off in the bin at the shop. I guess they could do that here now.

edit: Wayne, you should have gone up the road a couple miles when you were here to see my dad’s place. The place I grew up in is a nine acre junk yard covered in every kind of contraption and equipment and car and truck you can think of. I love having it around. My wife loves having it up there. His wife wishes it would be here. Jakob agrees with his wife. I have goten used to having a place that’s in better order. hahaha

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Hey Billy ,

I have made the statement that if a person can make a real good living working from his home ( farming , shop and outside work ) and doesn’t have just a little bit of junk around he may be selling drugs on the side :grin:

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Yep, crystal meth around here. Come to think of it, I have gotten quite a few mowers., floor jacks and appliances at the scrap yard from what I am sure was a drug addict selling off grandma’s shed items for another high. Scrap piles don’t last too long around an addict. And I think you’;re prob right about the dealers. We’re cleaning up our junk shed today in the rain…I took some pics but left the camera out when we came in to eat. Later…

Got some pics of my junk shed. It’s name is “The Fritz”---- as opposed to the Ritz I guess. We built this ugly shed for $167.00 in early spring. Jakob is in the pics for a size reference. It’s 48 ft wide and 70 ft long. You can also see a part of my chunker----still on the baler next to the boat.

Oh, and we loaded that load of scrap into the new bin…turns out I couldn’t let that paper box go after all. We threw it off intending to use the base for a grinder or anvil stand.

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Looks great for a “southern” system. Ha! Ha! Never handle a northern snow load.

Wife’s Pa’ biult a similar sized one back in ~1964 using salvaged Doug Fir lumber salvaged out of a 19teen-something two story large all-classes school house. That school taken out of service in 1939 with school district consolidation. Salved wood from it built the dairy/hay/loafing shed barn in 1961. The best original growth framing and sheathing boards had been re-used in 58/59 building the replacement 1500 sq/ft ranch house.
Equipment/firwood/freezers room/tool-room and “junk” shed got the tail-end of the salvage lumber and was too shy in the framing. Shows it now from the snow, winds and aging loads. L-e-a-n-s two ways now, like me. Dry rotted, like me.
Every winter. come Spring a question who will still be standing for one more years go-around. Me, or that 50 y.o. shed.

Anyhow. Pa’s . . . yours: good examples of DOing more, with less.
Now on the annual property taxes Arkansas versus Washington State. Caesar here says our old building is worth $5,500. currently. Annual property taxes rate is now a combined effective 11% annually. So, yes we now get to re-buy all “real” property every ~8 years. All lands, buildings, “improvemets”, etc.
Dry storage/work space is very valuable and expensive to own in the USofA socialist progressive states. Many now just teardown, burn down any outbuilding not in actual high value-use. Struggling to stay in-middle class, out of lower-class-push-down.
And has been stated on your Concussion topic some of us reluctant learned-to-be-socialists gotton real clever to over a week-end insta-appear tax-cheat dry cover storage.

“Needs must, when the Devil drives the sleigh”
J-I-C Steve Unruh

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.5 -1 percent of value in property taxes… in rural Ontario.

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Yeah, not really worried about too much snow.

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0.75% or maximum 750 US$ in Sweden.

Our tax is twice a year. First property tax then a school tax based on your property tax. :confused:

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Doing more with less…
Installing some “gasifier knowledge” in a Hot Oil Boiler of 2 Mega watt…
Testing the effects… also have a AFR gauge installed to improve the burning later on…

Teaching project to apply knowledge in real industry

Do more…
Use less…
Less waste…
Less pollution…

The input fuel is woodshavings from a carpenter factory…

Cleaning out the fly ashes…

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Nice job Koen you certainly have the nack and smarts for wood gas, and did you find a steady supply of wood shaveings? Are you building this unit as a drizeler.

Screw that tilling.

Search for pumpkin trellis.

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Now that is cool! I just might give that a try next year as a short archway entrance to the garden. Probably combine the pole beans with some winter squashes.

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I used this type of trellis at a smaller scale for my cucumbers in the cities. It sure made it easier to pick and saved a lot of garden space.

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Funny you say that. I was thinking to do the same thing with some kiwi vines.

We’ve done this with beans. It works pretty well, but there are beans that develop on top and you can’t see them. Also, it got old picking off a ladder so much. We ended up putting a walk planks on some blocks down the center.

Ha! Ha! It was ~1998 when the Wife and I had gotten our new Rhodesian Rigdeback pup that I was required to fence in the kitchen garden plot.
He’d rip and tear run through and pull up the new corn plants. BIG feet stopple to much of the other.
I used T posts and self standing 52" high, welded 1/4" rod, by 16 foot long cattle panels. (I need to take these down every year to rototill back the grass encroachments.
Wifie found that first year she could plant her green beans and climbing peas against this rigid fencing. Years later I took out the south and north permanent concreted posted in, old, old, sagging wire hinged joint fences and converted over to my rigid seasonal panels.
Now she cleverly plants pumpkins and squashes to climb these side fences. They get more sun, warm better, mature better. We are after maturity versus huge sizing. Ground contact here in a one-in-three years “cool-wet” summer and these can rot in ground contact.

I know I may bore with my claim of challenging gardening. I am really trying to show if I/we can with only 50-100 days growing, and 88-122 inches of rain - no excuses!!
Oregon/Washington coasts and Vancouver Island westside is worse/more challenging yet. Some of those 1870’s to 1930’s Light house and coastal Forts folks DID do vegetable gardens. Only way they had some seasonal fresh. Versus always Gov’mint supplied canned and dried foods.

On do more, with less.
I at best annually can make ~one cubic meter/one cubic yard of aged chicken manure/bedding/kitchen scraps/coffee grounds compost. We have virtually have no collectable amounts of desidous trees here for Fall leafs. Not enough “brown” adds, to balance out the available “green” adds, for good composting. And putting fir needles into the chicken pens will make it even MORE end results acid. Drive me to having to buy out ground powered AG-lime or another Dino fuel made/delivered buy-out to try and ph balance.
So . . . been pretty futile to spread out my limited no-weed-seed, well rooted manure mulch across the whole garden as I have in the past. Why in the past; every 3-4 years truck loads of bought-out fryer-house (chicken)/cow/horse/goat manures onto the garden. Never really aged well. Then 3 years of commercial animals feed weeds growing and slaving out to get back to a clean garden plot.
This year I read much widely. Learned a little, and now trying to in-row deep dig mix my manure mulch ONLY in the deep root crops planting rows. And will side dress later the heavy feeders like the table corn, tomato’s if they make it.
S-t-e-t-c-h out my own known “good” to just the roots zones.
Ha! 90 miles from the salty ocean coast or I would be washed sea weed harvesting and become a wastes fish emollient user.

Every place is different.
Has it’s own set of challenges.
“One-size fits-most solutions; will fit most poorly” s.u.

Regards
Steve Unruh

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We save all our fish wastes in a plastic barrel, but I have never taken the time to figure out how to use it. Maybe next time…like everything else…hahaha

DMWL-----we framed the roof structure of our recreation/teaching pavilion down by the creek today. Got a late start so the metal will have to wait til tomorrow. Bought a load of power poles at the cooperative auction about 15 years ago. I think we got something like 35 poles for $115 maybe. Used some to build a barn. Tore down the barn this spring so reused the poles for this thing. Milled the lumber from trees that blew down recently. standing seam metal was given to us for hauling it away.We’ll see how the metal turns out tomorrow Lord willing. Here’s a few pics from today.

Luke’s pretty good working on 4 inches.

He seems to be having fun.

Jesse’s working out the math to figure out the pitch and angle for the cuts.

yeah, we sell Dewalt…

The center post will come out after the metal is on.

Rebuilding an old storage shed for a garden shed yesterday. Didn’t have the barn mover around. worked pretty well.

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There you go with the movable “Garden Shed”.
Favorite way to dry storage tax-cheat in our progressive-socialist State of Washington. These: as portable, not attached to the ground, are not classed as Real, taxable property.
The current chicken house “garden shed” was got from a neighboring property being from mobile home converted to high-dollar stick built house.
I moved it cargo-strapped to the back lift deck of the small JD tractor. So second use was again as a garden shed here for the wife. Then moved a third time and pressed into service as a chicken house when we were mandated to get all of our livestock outside the town limits. Ha! 30 feet outside on our county property too near the tree-lot coyote zone. Yep. Every year I do lose chickens to snot&vinegar Spring pups learning to hunt for themselves… Try to every year get a ‘Yote harvested to quarter and stake out behind this shed as the best ‘Yote-scare-a-way. Works just like a dead crow hanging in the garden.
This 8’x8’x8’ “shed” never been put onto the tax rolls.
Neither has the wifie’s new-built 8’x12’x10’ garden shed. And just under the need-to-get a permit square-foot limit.

Your heavy treated power poles aught to be a lifetime solution.
J-I-C Steve Unruh

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