around the homestead-more spring cleanup

It is absolutely amazing how much stuff a couple people can accumulate over several years. By stuff I don't mean clothes or tools and the like but stuff that is a bi product of other stuff that no longer exists because of one thing or another. Things like old  scraps of lumber, shingles, bricks, hinges, sheet metal, gutters,small pieces of fencing, and that sort of stuff. The sort of stuff that 10 years ago I would have simply thrown into the trash  and not given another thought about but because of my own evolution and the evolution of my world and finances it is now stuff that allows us to build more stuff.

Because we are part lazy hippie, part  hillbilly and one of us is part Polish, more often than not our salvaged stuff just gets set where it is convenient and handy if we need it. It has no real home except up  next to any wall you could prop it up against. With three small out buildings down by the critter area it gives us a lot walls to lean things against, pile against and  get  things some where in the general vicinity of.  I have been down here 8 years and he has been here several more so you can just use your imagination   and create you own vision of what all the stuff was looking like.

The last couple of days I have been working on  general spring cleanup duties of branch n limb picking, weed eating dead grasses, picking up things the dogs have hauled off, giving herbs and  bushes  spring hair cuts and other assorted outdoor spring chores  while manthing has been working on the last of our wood chores for spring. Today he needed a break so we decided to piddle about and cleanup  the stuff. When  we renovated the chicken coop  it opened up a good size area out of the way that  wouldn't serve well for any other  purpose. It was however perfect for  organizing  and  storing everything we have accumulated over the years.

Other than the fence trellises for the tomatoes that we will be using in the next few weeks, we managed to get everything away from all the out buildings, give it all a good raking,  stash things away, organize it all   and even found a couple  small garden spots. It looks better down there than I have seen it since I have been here. We came up with a few new ideas for some of the stuff  that we may  try out soon  and see how they work and  we nixed a couple thoughts  that we had in our heads for other things because  after moving it all around  it became apparent those ideas  weren't  feasible after all.

Our next BIG clean up  will be the tearing apart the old fifth wheel and salvaging  everything we can from it. That is going to be a huge and messy job  that is going to take some time but should give us lots more stuff  to use around the homestead. It  was  set up to be fully self contained and run off a battery bank  and propane so everything  from the system will be  used eventually here on the homestead for a small off grid  set up. All the windows will be used for cold frames , the cushions and mattresses are going to become my arrow targets as I have bad aim and need large  targets. The tin will be kept to roof and side an out building  and who knows what other neat stuff will come of it. I know it will free me up another large area for, oh I dunno maybe another garden.

Now that we are getting things all cleaned up and spiffy I have vowed to put all stuff from this day forward in its proper location. Things really do look so much nicer .