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The three "R's" of recycling as they pertain to the homestead.
Replace-
Almost nothing lasts forever. Things done on the homestead today will most likely need to be repaired or replaced within a few years. A lot of this sort of thing will vary by climate factors- humidity, rain, snow, etc. We have found that in the Southeast we can count on pressure treated wood, exposed to the elements lasts at least a decade if cleaned and treated with a wood preservative every couple years. In the Southeast you can probably plan on replacing exposed PT wood every decade. You can prolong that via cleaning and treating with Thompson's wood preservative or similar every few years. The more sunlight hits the wood the more damage is caused as well.
Fence posts seem to be treated better than dimensional lumber. In almost 15 years here now, with some of the posts being in for 4-10 years before that, we haven't seen any significant failures in wooden fence posts. Would have to assume metal T posts will do even better.
We use cut telephone poles for corner posts in most areas as well as anti vehicular barriers. Have seen absolutely no deterioration of them during this time frame, even in wetter areas.
If you wished to further protect posts, thin metal could be placed over the top of the posts to give protection to water standing on the top of the post. Old soda cans could be used for the smaller fence posts (not good for aesthetics however), scrap tin for larger posts, empty #10's. All we have done in this regard is cut some of the posts on an angle so as the water tends to run off the top versus pooling at the top.
Repair-
Sometimes when money is tight you can't do much other than put a band-aid on a larger problem. We did this a lot in the first 8 years on the homestead. This is where you'll learn the concept of not cutting corners. Cutting corners, half arsing a project or skimping on materials DOES come back to bite you in the butt. Now it's just an inconvenience and a time waster. In the PAW it might be a good deal more than an inconvenience. It might mean going without water pressure, or having your animals out in the weather or worse.
Renovate-
As time goes by on the homestead, we realize all the faults we made- and continue to make.
Some things you just won't realize till you are "boots on the ground" for a while.
Once the gardens and orchards started going well (about 4-6 years boots on the ground)we had to begin home canning in earnest. This presented two problems.
First and foremost our kitchen was not exactly set up well for the purpose of putting up food. Mostly this was just minor inconveniences but those do tend to build up. For example- we have a fairly deep sink, but the spout on the original faucet was relatively low. When we would fill large water bath canners, some of the containers would have fit in the sink itself, but the faucet got in the way of filling. This necessitated filling numerous smaller pans and pouring into the canner. Hardly a hardship, but it slowed the process never the less. When you are doing a couple hundred quarts of the same product in a rush cause the window to get them all put up while fresh is small, these "little things" tend to build up.
Storage of the jars was the next problem. The first year we packed over 500 jars we both looked at each other, looked at the counters filled up with jars, the boxes on the floors with jars and thought "great where are we going to put all this?"
What storage areas we did have in the small house were filled to the brim already. Further we needed a storage area that was NOT "out of sight out of mind" for these items because of the shorter rotation period on these versus some of the products we keep in deep storage that usually don't have to be touched for year.
First in "repair" mode, we just looked for the quick fix and put the jars back in the case boxes and stacked them in a storage room. Some were stacked 6 or more cases high. That presents a problem also that isn't always immediately evident. We believe doing that weakened quite a few jars, as we saw a higher percentage of broken jars in the following years re-using some of these jars. Maybe the added pressure of the stacking caused this? Don't know for sure but we went from maybe one jar failure in canning (broken in the canner) in 30 to about 1 per batch of 14
So finally in "renovate" mode, we built proper shelving for the bulk of the home canned jars in a room inside the house where they can and are regularly rotated. Even though we aren't in an earthquake zone, away from the coast etc. We put a 1x2 "lip" on the ends of each shelf. This acts as a "keeper" to keep the jars from falling/sliding off the shelf. Further I put a slight tilt in the shelves, which all back up to a wall. This has worked out well for about 4-5 years now. We can see what we have at a glance and the only shuffling that has to occur is when we pull empties off the shelf to can with every summer.
You can expect to go through a similar process on the homestead. We think that when we build something, that it will be there forever, it won't be. Much like commercial buildings when properly managed get renovated every decade or so, we can expect to have to do the same for many systems on the homestead as well.
While I agree with the premise of "do it once and do it right" that really isn't how it usually plays out in the real world. Perfection isn't usually attained. Albeit we should build things strong as possible and over engineered as possible, we should have no illusions of them lasting forever.
Replace-
Almost nothing lasts forever. Things done on the homestead today will most likely need to be repaired or replaced within a few years. A lot of this sort of thing will vary by climate factors- humidity, rain, snow, etc. We have found that in the Southeast we can count on pressure treated wood, exposed to the elements lasts at least a decade if cleaned and treated with a wood preservative every couple years. In the Southeast you can probably plan on replacing exposed PT wood every decade. You can prolong that via cleaning and treating with Thompson's wood preservative or similar every few years. The more sunlight hits the wood the more damage is caused as well.
Fence posts seem to be treated better than dimensional lumber. In almost 15 years here now, with some of the posts being in for 4-10 years before that, we haven't seen any significant failures in wooden fence posts. Would have to assume metal T posts will do even better.
We use cut telephone poles for corner posts in most areas as well as anti vehicular barriers. Have seen absolutely no deterioration of them during this time frame, even in wetter areas.
If you wished to further protect posts, thin metal could be placed over the top of the posts to give protection to water standing on the top of the post. Old soda cans could be used for the smaller fence posts (not good for aesthetics however), scrap tin for larger posts, empty #10's. All we have done in this regard is cut some of the posts on an angle so as the water tends to run off the top versus pooling at the top.
Repair-
Sometimes when money is tight you can't do much other than put a band-aid on a larger problem. We did this a lot in the first 8 years on the homestead. This is where you'll learn the concept of not cutting corners. Cutting corners, half arsing a project or skimping on materials DOES come back to bite you in the butt. Now it's just an inconvenience and a time waster. In the PAW it might be a good deal more than an inconvenience. It might mean going without water pressure, or having your animals out in the weather or worse.
Renovate-
As time goes by on the homestead, we realize all the faults we made- and continue to make.
Some things you just won't realize till you are "boots on the ground" for a while.
Once the gardens and orchards started going well (about 4-6 years boots on the ground)we had to begin home canning in earnest. This presented two problems.
First and foremost our kitchen was not exactly set up well for the purpose of putting up food. Mostly this was just minor inconveniences but those do tend to build up. For example- we have a fairly deep sink, but the spout on the original faucet was relatively low. When we would fill large water bath canners, some of the containers would have fit in the sink itself, but the faucet got in the way of filling. This necessitated filling numerous smaller pans and pouring into the canner. Hardly a hardship, but it slowed the process never the less. When you are doing a couple hundred quarts of the same product in a rush cause the window to get them all put up while fresh is small, these "little things" tend to build up.
Storage of the jars was the next problem. The first year we packed over 500 jars we both looked at each other, looked at the counters filled up with jars, the boxes on the floors with jars and thought "great where are we going to put all this?"
What storage areas we did have in the small house were filled to the brim already. Further we needed a storage area that was NOT "out of sight out of mind" for these items because of the shorter rotation period on these versus some of the products we keep in deep storage that usually don't have to be touched for year.
First in "repair" mode, we just looked for the quick fix and put the jars back in the case boxes and stacked them in a storage room. Some were stacked 6 or more cases high. That presents a problem also that isn't always immediately evident. We believe doing that weakened quite a few jars, as we saw a higher percentage of broken jars in the following years re-using some of these jars. Maybe the added pressure of the stacking caused this? Don't know for sure but we went from maybe one jar failure in canning (broken in the canner) in 30 to about 1 per batch of 14
So finally in "renovate" mode, we built proper shelving for the bulk of the home canned jars in a room inside the house where they can and are regularly rotated. Even though we aren't in an earthquake zone, away from the coast etc. We put a 1x2 "lip" on the ends of each shelf. This acts as a "keeper" to keep the jars from falling/sliding off the shelf. Further I put a slight tilt in the shelves, which all back up to a wall. This has worked out well for about 4-5 years now. We can see what we have at a glance and the only shuffling that has to occur is when we pull empties off the shelf to can with every summer.
You can expect to go through a similar process on the homestead. We think that when we build something, that it will be there forever, it won't be. Much like commercial buildings when properly managed get renovated every decade or so, we can expect to have to do the same for many systems on the homestead as well.
While I agree with the premise of "do it once and do it right" that really isn't how it usually plays out in the real world. Perfection isn't usually attained. Albeit we should build things strong as possible and over engineered as possible, we should have no illusions of them lasting forever.
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