Lucky Day at the Salvage Yard

The other day I took one more trip to the local salvage yard to see what I could dig up. Lucky me, I came across the final materials needed to erect the tower that will hold my completed windmill. It’s certainly a wonderful feeling when you walk out of there paying around $15 for items that, if bought new, would cost around $250 plus, not to mention that I will be reusing items that might have otherwise been headed for the dump. Now – given that my wheelbarrow doesn’t actually have a front wheel and my steel rebar will need to be cut to size, these are all minor problems and will be just another part of a fun project. Over the next few days I will begin digging the foundation for the windmill tower. Yesterday it was a blazing 100 degrees out, plus I needed to make my world famous guacamole for our July 4th Hoe-Down. But now I am ready, focused, prepared to place those blades in the wind and see if it all starts spinning in the right direction. Updates coming soon.

Do you have a salvage yard in your area? If not – you may want to check out this sometimes amazing organization ( freecycle.org ) that is based on recycling things to others kind of like a craigslist but for random parts and supplies. They have groups spread out across the entire country – so most likely you are near one.

Here’s a bit more from them explaining their organization:

“The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,958 groups with 8,521,126 members around the world. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.”

There, now you have no excuse… get out and create.