Day 247

As I’ve mentioned before, living on the farm has only enhanced my tendency to be somewhat resistant to throwing things away. Everything has (or could have) a useful purpose so I tend to hang on to things and accept things others might toss or throw to the wayside.

Now that the first floor renovation is complete, we are trying to figure out how to best utilize our new space and rid ourselves of the clutter, including the trash and rubbish created because of the renovations. But not everything was simply tossed away. Old windows were salvaged as we hope to install them on the coop side of the barn to give our chickens more natural light and ventilation. Much of the usable lumber was added to our growing stall of potentially repurposed wood. Much of what was left was put in a trash pile near the compost pile. It mostly consisted of old bricks, crappy wood, and metal scraps that would soon fill up a dumpster. But at the base of this trash heap was the original barn door. Replacing this door was one of the first barn projects I had. Being covered by trash and overgrown grass, it was almost forgotten about. But once the renovation was complete, one goal was to clean up the yard as best we could. When I was able to acquire a dumpster and load it up, we decided to keep the door. We determined it was probably fulfilling a very useful purpose we knew we would all enjoy.

At our farm, we like to attract nature (except mise of course). We put up birdhouses and bird feeders. We are restoring the land with native plants. We wanted to make our land animal-friendly. Leaving the barn door on the ground was actually also contributing to this goal. This barn door served as a great snakeboard. Our slithering reptilian friends often seek refuge in a cool dark space and underneath a board is perfectly fine for them. We’ve seen naturalists use wooden boards as a way to monitor and collect information about the snakes that live amongst them. We decided we would, we could and we should do the same.