Free Gardening Supplies + Beer

Over the weekend we jumped into our beater pickup truck to run a bunch of gardening-related errands. I'd been waiting for an opportunity to knock out several tasks in one run, and it was finally the right time. There's a mushroom farm not too far from Kennett Square that gives away free organic mushroom compost most Saturday mornings. We had to get on the road pretty early to get there in time, but man, what a deal. We didn't even have to load it. They had a conveyor belt contraption that just dumped the compost right into the bed of our truck. We had to get in line between much larger farm machines pulling much larger trailers to haul the compost around in. Clearly these farmers know a good thing when they find it. We were thrilled.

Then off we went to another town in the area to drop off some seeds to a woman who had participated in the group ordering we did last month. She had mentioned that she had a large stand of bamboo, and that we were welcome to come and help ourselves to as much of it as we wanted. We did. I cut down twenty shafts, which, after trimming, we were able to cut into 11-foot sections with remainders 6 to 8 feet long . I want them to create six bean teepees for my garden this year. I'll use the longer sections for the teepees, and the shorter pieces for whatever else suggests itself. We stuffed the bamboo poles into the compost in the bed of the truck and recovered it all with a tarp.

Then it was off to a lunch break and a meetup with Meg & Kelly of Future House Farm at the Victory Brewing brewpub in Downington. We thought it very fitting, parking our beater truck in the brewery's parking lot with this bumper sticker on it. It was good to meet the "Pirate Farm" folks, as my husband calls them, and to chat about sustainability, books by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and food and beer of course. They're gardening-cooking-hen keeping folks themselves, and they're the ones that got me thinking in the first place about using bamboo in the garden. My husband was keen to hear about the rain barrel system they set up for their watering needs. He also indulged in a growler purchase, filled with a Victory brew.

After a lunch of satisfying food and conversation, we were off to our last freebie stop. I collected a few more composting worms from the third person to respond to my pleas for them. Two other women had kindly given me a few worms, but the total amount was pretty small compared to the size of the bin I'm using for them. So another addition wasn't amiss.

On the way home we had a funny encounter with a hugely enthused Asian man pulling up alongside us in a minivan while cruising along at 55 mph on the highway. He beckoned for me to roll down my window while his wife looked eagerly on. We were mystified, but I rolled down my window. "Where'd you get the bamboo?" he yelled excitedly. I shouted out the name of the town where we had cut it that morning, and he asked, "Is there somewhere to buy it?!?" I smiled ruefully, shook my head and watched his face fall. But he said thanks and drove off. We wondered whether we could've made some ready cash if we'd pulled over and offered to sell our poles on the spot.

The bamboo poles will be used to grow some Cherokee Trail of Tears beans and Hutterite Soup beans this year. Most of the mushroom compost will go into the raised beds we've yet to make for the asparagus crowns that will arrive in a few months.

We were pretty smug about getting so much free gardening stuff and meeting some interesting people for lunch. I think I won't have too much trouble rousting my husband early from bed again if I want to make a similar run again for more of the same. But I'm a little sore from cutting all that bamboo and then off-loading the compost. I'm out of shape from lack of gardening activity over the winter.

Homemade Sled Report

As promised, today my husband is guestblogging about the DIY sled he engineered earlier this month. Take it away, honey.

Sledding. It brings back such memories for many of us. The killer hill. That rush of speed. The biting cold. And that all-too-dreaded wipe out that sometimes ends in a burst of laughter or a sharp bang on the head.

I grew up in the Midwest and moved away to sunny California where snow was something rarely seen on the nearby mountains. It was more than a three hour drive to find good snow and a good run for sledding. And once there, skiing and snowboarding were the “cool” pursuits rather than sledding.

But now I’ve moved to the East Coast where snow once again dominates the first several months of the new year. And I find myself rooting during a snowstorm for enough accumulation to cover the grass and make for a good run. I even found myself scouting the local hills.

But what to do about an inexpensive sled? The local stores carry plastic concoctions that don’t look like they’d survive my kind of abuse or need for speed. I never understood the traditional runner sled. "Flyer" seemed a misnomer on our snow. We always went for something that could fly on freshy and could be super-modified with a bit of silicone spray.

My wife, the frugal maven, showed me a picture of a sled made with old skis. Now this was the stuff of dreams. My first task was to find an old pair of skis for a song. I placed an online “wanted” ad which received a prompt reply from a man who had seen old skis at a thrift store. I drove over and found two pairs for $6 a piece. This was right at my wife’s price point. I had wood from previous McMansion sub-division construction dumpster diving and leftover screws from previous projects. I tried to use the screws and holes from the bindings but abandoned that route in favor of drilling tap holes and screwing the wood directly into the composite resin of the ski. The trick here was to match the screw length and wood thickness so as not to punch through the bottom of the ski.

My plan was to attach two parallel cross beams at the same location of the bindings. I chose 1" x 3” planks about 24” long. Having given up on the bindings, I just needed to avoid those holes and use enough screws to give some structural support to the cross-beam connection to the ski. My first test in freshy was unsatisfying. The cross-beam was so low, riding on top of the snow-sunk skis, that it snow plowed. So I put in risers, made of stacked 2 x 4’s, to give me some clearance. I also added a length of cord to the front cross-beam to ease that arduous, post-run, uphill trudge.


The first test was a success. But now the problem of a seat loomed upon me. I wanted an old tire inner tube for shock-absorbing but tires have all gone tubeless (even the sweet old semi-truck tubes good for sledding and river runs). I checked through my pile of old pick-up truck tires (free with the purchase of a beater truck). They seemed a bit heavy but once the tire was liberated from the rim for free at my local tire dealer it didn’t seem so bad.

Bungee cords seemed a good way to hook the tire to my cross-beam system for prototyping. They worked surprisingly well. I discovered, that with a small kick down even the slightest slope in my backyard, my sled would sail quite far. The first low-stress test was made on a small hill near the library. I was pleased with the “butt-in-the hole” ride (as was my wife) but I was nearly thrilled with the “belly down” run. High-stress testing has yet to occur due to the snow melting while I was away on a business trip. But I’ve got the next hill picked out and fingers crossed for a good dumping of snow. Wish me luck and no structural failures as I land, launched off the lip of a sand trap at our local golf course.

Another guest post by my husband: Other People's Fruit.

Feed the Hungry

Many of us are keenly aware of how precarious our food supply is right now, at both the personal and national level. People are losing jobs, and food prices are still high. Conventional agriculture relies on petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides. When the price of oil bounces back up, it will once again be prohibitively expensive to fly and ship food from continent to continent. Way back in 2004, then-Secretary of US Health Tommy Thompson mused, "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." Yikes.

It's scary. Even those of us who grow some of our own food and contribute to food banks often feel there's so very little we can do about food security. Well, there is one thing that is truly easy to do that can help alleviate world hunger. Play a word game on your computer.

Free rice is a minimalist website that offers an ongoing vocabulary test. For every word problem you correctly answer, the website will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. The costs are paid by the sponsors whose ads are remarkably unobtrusive on the gaming page. It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time to contribute enough grains of rice to help feed a hungry person somewhere in the world. If English vocabulary isn't your strong suit, you can opt for vocabulary testing in another language, or get quizzed on your knowledge of chemistry, art, geography, or math. You may even learn a few things while you're at it.

I don't mean to trivialize hunger. We can't build a world of food security just by playing games on our computers. But it is one little thing we can do, and it's free and educational at the same time. So check out freerice.com and help someone in need, for free.

Participating in Your Own Life

This is a quickie post before I dash off tomorrow for the holiday with distant family, inspired by CG's post on participating materially in our own lives. This post spoke to me in a weird way. Have you ever read something, or had someone say something that sums up a bunch of random thoughts that have been knocking around in your subconscious? That's sort of what the Contrary Goddess' post did for me.

Then Meadowlark posted the following list and asked everyone to bold the items they had done. It's kind of a tangent, and kind of not. I've gone and added another ten items of my own at the end of her list. Post the list on your own blog if you want to play along at home. Add your own items for bonus points. (Everyone wins though.)

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (This is one that definitely won't happen! You couldn't pay me to go.)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis (But I have held a dragonfly.)
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (That'd be something to see!)
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (more than once)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill (You mean there's someone who hasn't done this?)
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping (Does it count if it was during a childhood summer spent largely naked?)
27. Run a Marathon (Uh, no. You know what happened to the first person who "ran a Marathon," right?)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse (Yes, but only lunar.)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (moonrises too)
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (- short run only, >1 day.)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (Well, yes, a few actually, but with plenty of help from teachers.)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater (A summer of Star Wars re-runs. Very formative.)
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check (I'm pretty sure I've never done this.)
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar (fresh from the Caspian Sea, on the coast of the Caspian Sea)
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone (No. Knock on wood!)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House (Not the inside, just the outside.)
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life (Probably saved his life, couldn't save his brother. Not a good memory.)
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Several, but just to shake hands and chit-chat.)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (I'm not mother material. Really.)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit (Class action doesn't count, right?)
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee (Was stung by about half an angry hive once.)
100. Read an entire book in one day (Some books are just like that.)

101. Attended a religious service of a religion significantly different than your own
102. Changed a flat tire, or fixed a leaky faucet
103. Lived in a foreign country
104. Euthanized (or had euthanized) a beloved pet
105. Witnessed a (human) birth
106. Witnessed a (human) death (see #89, above)
107. Donated an organ or bone marrow while still alive
108. Planted a tree
109. Cut a Christmas tree from the wild
110. Voluntarily fasted for a full day or more

Sign off in the comments if you're playing

My Cheapest Hobby: Dumpster Diving

A little while ago, Trent at The Simple Dollar posted about making your hobbies more frugal. I'm lucky in that the hobbies I am naturally drawn to happen to be very cheap, and even money saving, activities. I love to cook, and recently took up the art of baking. I find gardening very rewarding too. But sometimes I need a little more adventure, as well as a change of scenery. That's when I get the itch to go dumpster diving.

Dumpster diving is done for all sorts of reason and by all sorts of people. The motivations for it include environmental concerns, financial need, and pure entertainment. Some people want to reduce the amount of stuff that ends up in landfills. Many dumpster dive for food, toiletries and other items because they need or want to save money. They are either comfortable with the risk or they don't have much choice. For others, it's just something interesting to do on occasion with some free time. A few dumpster divers get hooked by the thrill of the hunt and sense of adventure. Plenty of divers combine several of the above motivations.

Individual divers take various approaches and dive for many different sorts of items. I used to live in a wealthy college town. At the end of the school year the pickings were ripe around the student housing and dorms all around campus. In the upscale neighborhoods, one might find free appliances in working order on the curbside any time of year. On two separate occasions I found rusted but fundamentally sound cast iron skillets sitting outside with the trash. I took them home, re-seasoned them, and still use them today. Dedicated divers develop their own expertise in local "resources." By visiting a wide range of dumpsters on a regular basis, it's possible in some cases to learn the schedule and predict when the dumpster will be full or empty, when it will contain freshly discarded food or other specific items. Others take a more casual or opportunistic approach. Some "divers" never climb inside a dumpster at all, but just take what they can grab from the top. I've seen people "diving" only for aluminum cans or other scrap metal they intend to sell for a little cash.

Personally, I haven't worked up the nerve to dive for food. I've heard the horror tales, and I'm just not that brave. Instead, my husband and I dive for building materials, and we are frequently astounded by what we find. The new housing market hasn't totally collapsed where I live. There's still a fair amount of "development" going on. And the house sites are nearly always unoccupied on weekends, especially Sundays. We've found usable lumber, roofing shingles, twisted up belts of perfectly good nails, five-gallon buckets, metal tools with busted wooden handles, and even a new porcelain pedestal sink in perfect condition in construction site dumpsters. If the house is being built in an area where there are already other houses around, it usually becomes a magnet for stuff other people want to get rid off. I've found antique blue glass bottles, a real slate blackboard in a wooden frame, and a neon orange adult-sized snowsuit in perfect condition in such a dumpster.

For people who keep themselves on a very strict budget, dumpster diving is like a bonanza. Everything is free, and every dive is something different. There's no doubt about it: dumpster diving is cheap fun for frugal folk. Whenever we go dumpster diving we have to make some tough decisions. Invariably we find more stuff than we have room to haul. So we sort through the lumber and reject the smallest and most damaged pieces, cherry-picking our finds until the car or the bed of our beater truck is full. If we hit an especially rich dumpster, we may even make a second trip.

I've made well appreciated Christmas gifts from materials I fished out of dumpsters. And we built our chicken coop and pen partly with with salvaged materials from our weekend adventures. We'll be building our retirement home at some point. Literally building that is - we plan to do as much of the hands-on building as feasible, only contracting out highly specialized jobs like the foundation pour, the rough in plumbing and the rough in electrical. So there's a good chance that we'll be able to use some materials we've salvaged ourselves. We're keeping an open mind about the design of our home so that we can incorporate as much salvaged material as we like. In the meantime, we store our finds in a shipping container on our land.

Dumpster diving is exciting, but there are are some obvious caveats. Dumpster diving is risky and illegal in some areas. It always, always pays to have your tetanus booster shot up to date. Exercise extreme caution when climbing in to a dumpster, and before doing so, make sure you'll be able to climb back out. Make a good visual inspection and enter at your own risk. You may encounter rusty nails, broken glass, or even discarded syringes. Contents may shift around dramatically as you walk over them. Wear protective clothing, and dive with a buddy if you plan to climb inside. The worst that's ever happened to me while diving is a splinter or a bruise, but I'm aware of the risks every time I dive.

Rules of ethical diving. Check your local regulations to make sure dumpster diving is not illegal in your area. Never pick up anything that contains anyone's personal or financial information. If there are signs or fences indicating that you are not welcome, heed them. If you are challenged by someone while diving, whether they are law enforcement, owners or employees, be polite and non-confrontational. If asked to leave, do so quickly and never return to that dumpster. (You may be able to avoid trouble by saying you were looking for cardboard boxes. Few people will object to this, but it won't work if you've already hauled out a bunch of other stuff.) Leave the site in the same or better condition than you found it. If there is any question whatsoever about whether or not something was intended to be discarded, leave it as you found it. Finally, if you start to acquire a surplus of items through your diving, consider giving away what you can't use to someone in need.

Got any diving questions, phobias, or success stories? Share them in the comments!