Turning junk into something useful. Even if it’s only something to burn for heat.

Whether it’s demolition salvage, pallets or just broken furniture, it’s still bound to be better firewood or kindling than juniper. At least as good, anyway.

We have evolved a sort of manorial system here at the Gulch, and one of my duties as the only resident villein is to keep Landlady’s woodbin full. Since I didn’t see much of her this winter the duty was mostly honored in the breach by making sure it wasn’t too seriously empty. Now the weather’s warming and I’m stirring about more, and one chore is to fill that thing up.
I brought a few wheelbarrows-worth over on Friday, but also uncovered a bunch of longer stuff that had collected at her barn. So today I determined to make something useful of it.

Nothing gets that done quickly quite as well as a chopsaw. Just watch out carefully for nails.

Progress! We’ll leave topping it off until I start cutting my own wood, sometime probably much later in the season.
















































I noticed that wood corral in the pic with your earlier post about wheelbarrowing the wood up there – but I couldn’t figure out what it was at the time. I’m guessing that it’s mostly to keep the packrats out? Ok – rattlesnakes too! How’s it work?
Back when you were having the problems with the packrats getting into the jeep – I almost suggested doing something like the wood corral to keep them out.
PNO – Back then I sent Joel a link to a site online with ideas for building a packrat excluding raised parking space that had a metal surround with one end removable to get the vehicle in and out. I think it was posted by someone living back east. It was simple, relatively cheap to build, and the person who built and posted it claimed it worked and he had no more problems.
Yeah, Landlady built it in late autumn, and so far it has in fact been effective in keeping packrats at bay.