One man's junk....

Yesterday while chasing our recalcitrant calf Lucy off a neighbor's property, Don and I decided to walk the fenceline to see where she might be slipping through to the other side. This particular neighbor owns two parcels forming an L around us, so we walked along two sides of our property, looking for holes.

While doing so, we came across a large stash of old lumber and rolled up used field fencing, apparently abandoned. Since this neighbor has this parcel of property for sale, we decided to call and make an offer on the abandoned materials.

So Don called, and his offer was accepted immediately. To the neighbor, the abandoned materials were junk that he would just as soon get rid of before putting the parcel on the market. To us? Treasure untold.

Besides... with all that field fencing, we'll be able to reinforce our property boundaries and hopefully keep Lucy where she's supposed to be (an added benefit to our neighbor!).

So today we hitched a small wagon to the tractor and drove around to the access road between our two properties. (I rode in the wagon.)

Well, what do you know... there's Lucy again, grazing where she shouldn't be. Good thing no one around here minds her wanderings.

The access road is rough and rocky, but in good shape.

Don backed the little trailer up to the woodpile.

Here's some of the wood -- 2x6s about 15 feet long.

There were piles of plastic corrugated siding, as well as poles of all sorts -- some aluminum, some PVC, etc.

It's hard to determine how much field fencing there is -- but clearly enough for generous amounts of fencing.

There are stacks and stacks of miscellaneous boards, posts, and a couple of railroad ties. Sadly, much of the boards (and especially the railroad ties) are rotten beyond redemption.

The 15-foot 2x6s were far too long to put on the little trailer, so Don went home and got the truck as well, which has a wood rack on top. Then we began sorting. Many of the boards were too rotten to be salvaged, and literally fell apart or crumbled when we lifted them. We saw lots of carpenter ants in the rotten parts. The salvageable boards were very heavy from water -- we'll need to stack them properly with spacers, to dry, before they can be used.

We stacked the trash materials to one side for the time being (we'll remove it later and burn it). We loaded the salvageable boards onto the wood rack.

We loaded smaller boards, beams, and the plastic corrugated sheeting onto the small trailer.

Clearly this is someone's dismantled greenhouse from years past. The material is in superb shape -- no cracks, splits, holes, etc.

With the vehicles loaded, we retraced our path down the access road...

...and back up to the house, where we encountered a traffic jam, country-style. Move, Matilda!

Don later went down by himself, dragged one of the larger bales of field fencing out, and strapped it to the tractor bucket.

Another traffic jam. (In case you haven't noticed, we let Matilda, Amy, and Hector out into the driveway since it's too muddy in the woods for a newborn calf.)

It will take us a couple of weeks, working in our spare time, to remove all the abandoned materials from this pile. But what a treasure! We're grateful it's another man's junk.

Dumpster diving

In the rural parts of our county, we have no garbage service. Instead, there are dumpsters located in various spots where people can put their trash. This is a blessing for those whose livelihood includes salvaging. I know there are a number of people who make a fairly decent living salvaging usable items from the dumpsters scattered around the county, either by cleaning stuff up and selling it, or by selling items to scrap dealers. It's all a tidy way to handle refuse.

People who have things they no longer want will leave the items beside the dumpsters (sometimes with little signs that say "Take me home with you, I work just fine" or "Free to good home" or whatever). We've taken a couple of bicycles the girls have outgrown and left them beside the dumpsters for another parent to bring home to his kid.

And we've had a number of lucky finds ourselves. One time shortly after we moved to Idaho, I was startled to find a beautiful and intact ladies' vanity table thrown away. The only thing wrong with it was one drawer was missing. So I fished it out of the dumpster, cleaned it up, and we've used it as a sewing table ever since.

Don took a dumpster run the other day. He came hurrying back, collected me, and we went to salvage an enormous load of aluminum siding that someone had dumped. Unfortunately they put the siding IN the dumpsters rather than piled NEXT to a dumpster, so it meant a lot of leaning over the filthy sides of the metal bins and eventually climbing in to hand stuff out.

But the haul was fabulous. We lost count but think we got about ninety sheets of siding. Don grinned about it for hours. What a bonanza! Outbuildings, here we come!

The truck tires compressed under all the weight.

Of course, once I got home I consigned every garment I was wearing to the wash...