Someone used this place as an auto salvage yard years ago and I found at least 50 old tires laying around. The rims I sold with other scrap metal. A few uses to recycle old tires: They can be used to stabilize an eroding slope by burying them step-fashion in the slope, with each layer alternating, stacked like bricks. You fill each layer as you build them up and they'll hold enough gravel and soil to grow ground cover and further stabilize the soil. They can be used to build more vertical retaining walls the same way, but should always be slightly tilted into the weight they're holding if they're not going to be stabilized with posts or concrete. I used them to stabilize deep river-gravel fill where I wanted to build a livestock shed on a gentle slope with the floor raised a foot above the surrounding soil at one end and over two feet on the other. They worked out great as a solid foundation filled with the gravel, and as a form to hold the concrete for the posts, but I pity the person who ever tries to remove that shed without heavy equipment. They're completely buried and not visible. There were plans in Mother Earth News years ago on how to build a house or shed out of them, but something resembling a cold frame, to take advantage of the thermal mass of the earth they can hold, is more practical. Old tires are the perfect thing to use as a pallet for storing big round bales of hay; it keeps them up off the ground so they don't rot on the bottom as much. Setting an old tire just under the front edge of a bale you're trying to get off a spike stops it from skidding. If you don't plan on using big bales, maybe someone in the area who does could use the tires. They can be used as stands for feed and water buckets, but I don't care to create hiding places for snakes or breeding places for mosquitos by leaving them around like that. They can also be used as weights to hold down the edges of hay covers or tarps. The phone poles make good gate posts or corner posts for fences. If they're in good shape and not rotted or riddled by insects, you might be able to sell them or use them yourself.

Craigslist has them, but the main 2 guys on craigslist can't get the locking rings that I would prefer. Neither can the dealer/remanufacterer in okc. And they want nearly 80$ for the 30 gallon drum. These projects I have need to be budget friendly. I think the place I found was called C S Industrial. I will try alpha products. Thanks Scott

Thanks, Annie for the info. Pretty much anything at that time that wasn't a Singer was a knock off. :) It's tough to do a Google search on the brand name because google wants to use the word Modern as an adjective instead of a noun. I will definitely pass down the stories to my daughter who is now 6. She already has the passion for crafting and spends many hours a day coming up with her own ideas to make things. Rebecca

@CharlesRossHomes & @Virgil, Unfortunately there is little to hold people in residential construction accountable. There are a plethora of stories of architects designing structures well beyond client's stated or even stretched budgets. This happens when the plans are being developed independently for competitive bidding and when a specified builder is involved. Our first attempt came out 60% over our stated budget that the architect & builder had agreed to and our builder's detailed estimate was then 17% over the stretch number that they'd both asked us if we could do only 6 weeks prior. "I absolutely guarantee you that the contingency number is enough to cover all unexpected costs so you can absolutely rely on this estimate." This was obviously excepting changes that we made. Over and over we were assured that the estimate numbers and contingency were conservative enough that we could count on our builder's estimate. We are not even to to insulation yet and are already 5x that contingency. And that doesn't include $70k in concrete work for a terrace wall that kind of suddenly appeared without notification or discussion to us (and that will require another chunk of $'s for stone). The quality of work has so far been good though we have concerns with what we've seen so far from the insulation contractor. We are trying to be patient. We still believe that the end result will have been worth it. That said, we've no more money left so any cost overruns will mean having to reduce costs elsewhere. When the builder said that they'd now need to do Tyvek + Rainscreen we had to eliminate a couple of light fixtures that my wife really wanted and replace them with less expensive and less appealing fixtures. Hopefully once we move in those lessor-than-we'd-chosen fixtures will disappear in to the background and we'll be happy. But what else is coming? What other lighting fixtures will have to be downgraded because our builder's estimate was so inaccurate? How many bits of furniture will we have to notify our designer that we can no longer afford because of costs our builder didn't anticipate? How much of the landscaping plan will have to be reduced? Will we even be able to use our chosen landscaper or will we have to go with a lessor landscaper and lessor plan? ---------- The residential construction industry in the U.S. is getting an increasingly bad reputation. It's an industry that requires a great bit of trust and that trust seems to increasingly be violated.