Our pile of junk had been sitting in the pasture for seven years.  It was a mixture of plastic, metal, and old wooden posts from a variety of sources around the ranch.  It had evolved over time.  If we needed a certain material for a project, the junk pile would be our first place to look to see what we could use out of it. Once I found an old door that we installed on the goat shed when we created a room addition for our new baby goats.  I still remember the thumbs up my father-in-law gave me when I propped it up for him to see.  Unfortunately,  I noticed the goats and horses spending a lot of time close to the pile, and I worried that one of them would get tangled up in something and hurt.  It was time to take this pile of treasure to the landfill.

We hooked up the trailer and started loading the accumulation of seven years of destruction.  Mixed into the pieces of roofing, gutters, batteries, and brass candlesticks were landscape timbers that had been used for a small round pen built by my father-in-law in 1997.  Hmmmm. Why had he used landscape timbers for a fence instead of fence posts?  Had they been left by someone else?  I was intrigued.  Even though it was time consuming, I removed only the staples that held the remaining fence in place, put the old fence on the trailer, and set the wood aside.  It took quite a bit of time and effort, but I loved the idea of salvaging one last repurposed item from the pile. Continue reading Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch: A RE-Purposeful Life →