making progress!

21 years ago

Hello all,

We finally gave up on the guys down the road, who never showed up to mow the hayfield. After many unreturned phone calls and stops at their house, we called in a brush cutter to take down the 7-ft weeds. The mowing revealed some surprises - several piles of tires and other garbage, telephone poles, cattle grates and plastic bags. And hornets and wasps. I felt their wrath when I tried to pull apart the piles. So I started taking off layers and killing, then more layers and more killing. I put hundreds of poor little wasp and hornet spirits on their way to the eaves of Heaven. Found out it wasn't so easy to get rid of old tires and rims here - so if anyone has some great ideas to reuse them, I'm all ears! I also have 5 good sized telephone poles. But boy, that field looks so nice now - clover hay peeking out already. This morning we talked to a neighbor dairy farmer and offered him the use of the back two acres of field until we needed it - we have our hands full with the front two for at least the first year. He was happy to have it and is also taking the cattle grates we found in the field. He offered to plow the garden area this fall so I can cover with a manure crop.

Well, we are proud owners of a used John Deere 400 - dubbed "Dollar" after John Wayne's horse in "The Shootist." Hubby thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread. He went out and bought a house for it - a 12 by 22 foot barn-style shed that will be delivered in a few weeks.

I still need to find a tiller or rent one so I can extend the flower bed - looking for a used one in the paper. And over the last few weeks I traded my labor at a U-pick blueberry stand in exchange for blueberries. My freezer is stocked with berries for the winter!

Rosie

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Comments (4)

apcohrs
21 years ago
Whooooeeee! sounds like things are coming up roses!

Good luck on the tires. Around here, the places that sell tires are required by law to take the old ones back and send them to a recycler.
DPallas
21 years ago
Someone used this place as an auto salvage yard years ago and I found at least 50 old tires laying around. The rims I sold with other scrap metal. A few uses to recycle old tires:

They can be used to stabilize an eroding slope by burying them step-fashion in the slope, with each layer alternating, stacked like bricks. You fill each layer as you build them up and they'll hold enough gravel and soil to grow ground cover and further stabilize the soil. They can be used to build more vertical retaining walls the same way, but should always be slightly tilted into the weight they're holding if they're not going to be stabilized with posts or concrete.

I used them to stabilize deep river-gravel fill where I wanted to build a livestock shed on a gentle slope with the floor raised a foot above the surrounding soil at one end and over two feet on the other. They worked out great as a solid foundation filled with the gravel, and as a form to hold the concrete for the posts, but I pity the person who ever tries to remove that shed without heavy equipment. They're completely buried and not visible.

There were plans in Mother Earth News years ago on how to build a house or shed out of them, but something resembling a cold frame, to take advantage of the thermal mass of the earth they can hold, is more practical.

Old tires are the perfect thing to use as a pallet for storing big round bales of hay; it keeps them up off the ground so they don't rot on the bottom as much. Setting an old tire just under the front edge of a bale you're trying to get off a spike stops it from skidding. If you don't plan on using big bales, maybe someone in the area who does could use the tires.

They can be used as stands for feed and water buckets, but I don't care to create hiding places for snakes or breeding places for mosquitos by leaving them around like that. They can also be used as weights to hold down the edges of hay covers or tarps.

The phone poles make good gate posts or corner posts for fences. If they're in good shape and not rotted or riddled by insects, you might be able to sell them or use them yourself.
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donna37
21 years ago
Stack a couple and plant 'taters in them. Start with one and put the seed potatoes in and cover, as the potatoes grow, keep filling with dirt and mulch. Get to top of one tire, put the other one on top and continue. When ready to pick, just take the tires off and there's your potatoes without any damage from a tool digging them.
I have a big old tractor tire I use, but have to dig them out, can't move that sucker.
Donna
dovekeeper
Original Author
21 years ago
Great ideas! Thanks so much!