Used Tires: Pollution or Resource?

I don’t know about you, but I pick up junked tires that other people dump off the side of mountain roads in my county - usually along with assorted junked appliances and badly bagged household trash - and take them with me when I do the monthly trash run to our local Inconvenient Center. I call it that instead of its own self-title of “Convenient Center” because it’s damned IN-convenient. They put all their dumpsters inside a compound with high chain link topped by barbed wire and guarded by a grizzled old grouch (and his junkyard dog) who seem to really hate the idea that people have trash and recyclables to responsibly dispose of, which is only open 3 days a week when almost all of us are actually out working honest jobs instead of hauling our own trash.

Anyway, there is a corner of the inconvenient center devoted to junked appliances and tires, which supposedly get recycled at some point (though I’ve never noticed the piles to go down any). Better to have those big junk items at the center than on the roads and hillsides. They never biodegrade, they are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and they look really nasty. So, you might have been wondering, how exactly do they recycle things like the 190 million car, truck and equipment tires tossed every year in this nation, and what COULD be done with them?

My friend Vito over at RideLust has asked the obvious question, based on a recycling technology that could actually be of some great use and wouldn’t spread West Nile Fever. It’s called Rubberized Asphalt Concrete [RAC], and it would not only give us better, longer lasting road surfaces, it would save us a whole heck of a lot of petroleum dependence!

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Filed under Energy, Environment, Pollution, Recycling | Comment (0)

Preparing for Winter

After the hard rains of leftover hurricane Fay flooded the basement and caused hubby and I to have to sleep on the living room floor on a fouton (and we’re still there, since it’s just us for a few more weeks), we got our first real cold front yesterday. Nights are down into the 50s and scheduled to stay there for at least a week, reminding us that it’s now time to think about winter heat.

So in between harvesting concords and muscodines, I’ve prepared the stove pipe cleaning mechanism. No, it’s not a nice English chimney sweep brush, it’s an old holey towel tied around other old rags and a large round river rock, onto which I tie a long piece of rope. We get up on the roof and remove the chimney hood, then drop this thing into the pipe so it will scrape down any accumulated soot. Which falls into the stove in the basement. The pipe runs straight up through the main floor and loft, so there are no bends and kinks. This is good if you’re heating with wood, as bends tend to accumulate more creosote and are difficult to clean. The tall pipe is the “central” part of our central heating system, giving off a lot of heat when it’s cold and making the single wood stove very efficient.

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Filed under Activities, Biofuels, Energy, Heating, Homestead, Independence | Comment (0)

When the Fruit Salad Ripens

The long summer drought finally ended last week with a full 12 inches from tropical storm Fay’s leftovers that sat stubbornly right overhead for three days. Pears are falling fast from the granny tree next to the driveway, being mashed into pulp every time a vehicle comes or goes and smelling so sweet it’s drawing flocks of turkeys and herds of deer. The fruit is hard and will dent the car if we park there, but I’ve a plastic helmet to protect my head for gathering. Which I’ve just gotta get busy doing before the bears show up.

Between the Granny pear and the house are the grapes, concords and muscadines quickly ripening but not quite sweet enough yet to justify harvest. That will come in mid-September, I’ll make jam, compote and wine (usually ends up as wine vinegar) this year, the basalmic from last year’s harvest is still aging.

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Filed under Food Production, Food Storage, Harvest, Homestead, Nutritition, Recipes | Comment (0)