One Man's Trash

If I learned, one thing about growing up on a farm and marrying a farmer, it would be farmers are very resourceful. It seems like every time my Mom would throw something out of the littlest use, it always ended up in my Dad's shop. He seems to think that there would be a need for it someday or that would be able to tinker with it to find a need it for later.

That all came in handy a month or so ago when we up at my mom's house, we noticed a stray kitten wandering around the acreage. My parents hadn't had a cat for over 10 years. The last dog had to be put down a year ago. But sure enough, we went in the shop and there was a cat food bowl and water bowls, too. We even found some old dog bones, which our dog at home was very happy about.

My husband and I had been talking about getting chickens soon. We always had them growing up but it had been 20 years or so since the chicken house was tore down and the chickens all disappeared. I was wondering through my Dad's shop a few weeks ago, and sure enough I found the old metal hen houses we had. You better believe, I will using those hen houses for our chickens soon!

Now some call it being a pack rat, or a hoarder, but when you know something will come in handy later, you just know. Sometimes it may not be useful in its original form, but transformed it might just save you. One man's trash is another man's treasure!

My husband’s family use to grow cotton, back when cotton was king. After switching to almonds, they kept a few old row crop implements around just because ‘you never know when you might need it’.

Well, there came a day when we needed a good chisel for our almond orchards and those old row crop disks had chisels that would work just right. 

So, the husband, father in law and brother in law got to cutting, welding and fabricated a pretty good chisel for the almond orchards. It definitely, took some vision but they saw the need and the parts to make something pretty great.

There is an older field that our family recently started farming. We choose to chisel the soil to help water penetrate the root zone more efficiently. 

The previous farmer, flood irrigated this field. With time, the soil became compacted from years and years worth of tractor work on top of flood irrigated soil. Chiseling the field helps the soil loosen up and enables to the root zone to hold more water. 

It also helped clear the shop yard of some of the old scraps laying around. 

Anyone else love when you can turn trash into treasures?

Until Next Time,

Almond Girl Jenny