If you buy a piece of rural property in Southern Illinois you will be blessed with many things. You will be blessed with rich black soil that just begs to be tilled and planted. You will be blessed with beautiful birds such as bluejays, cardinals, doves, owls, hawks, and many many more along with other wildlife like wild turkeys and whitetail deer, the occasional fox or coyote. And if you happen to buy a piece of land with a creek, ditch, or most likely even just a big hill with a bottom to it, you will probably be blessed with this.........
That's right.............JUNK! We have a deep seasonal creek that runs through our property and it is full, and boys and girls I do mean FULL, of junk. Any kind of junk you can think of, we've pulled it out of there. Several generations of junk. Bicycles, cultivators, tires, batteries, sinks, cast iron bathtubs, stoves, cars (yes I said cars), furnaces......anything you can imagine. Back in the day I guess people didn't know any better, or just didn't care or whatever. If you've bought property in Southern Illinois and didn't see a mess like this, it's likely that an owner before you already cleaned it up! Anywho, around here we call this stuff scrap and as good stewards of the land it's our responsibility to get it cleaned up. We have to haul scrap when the weather allows because we have to take Betty back in the back and we can't tear the pasture up too bad or Champ and the goats won't be too happy with us once the grass starts growing. Friday evening when The Man got home from work we decided to head down in the back and get a load of scrap before the rain moved in on Saturday and Sunday.
You can't tell, but there is part of a field cultivator, an entire cast iron bathtub (that was a doozie for The Paintiff and I to get loaded) and a huge old heater, not to mention a battery, and lots and lots of little pieces of scrap in this load. Once we get a truckload we head here........
Then we drive onto the scale. When we get "the nod" from the scale guy, we drive to wherever they direct us to unload the scrap. The Man gets out and along with one of the scrap yard workers unloads everything. Then we drive back over the scale to get the tare weight. Once again, we wait for "the nod" from the scale guy, then drive off the scale, park and go in and collect our money. Right now scrap is at 180$/ton for unprepared stuff, which is what we have. Here's our scale ticket, showing the weights, the price per ton, and our toal payout.
The gross weight is what our truck weighed loaded with scrap. The tare weight is what our truck weighed after we unloaded and the net weight is the difference between the two.
This time we made $117, not bad for a couple hours work and getting our property that much cleaner in the process!
Here's to good stewardship of God's land and high prices for scrap!!
Till next time..............GOD BLESS!
Wow! That's amazing! It's good to be able to get paid to clean it up.
ReplyDeleteGood for you! We also acquired several piles of junk at our old farmstead in WI that we have been working on cleaning up for 3+ years. It's always an extra blessing when the scrap prices are so high!
ReplyDeleteWOW! So every year the creek brings more stuff to your property? I guess its not that bad if you look at it as your getting paid for other ppls junk that they were too lazy to scrap themselves.
ReplyDeleteHi tberry! It doesn't wash down the creek from other people, but the rushing water just uncovers more of it that was previously buried in the mud! Yeah, that's the way we have to look at it, cleaning up God's earth and getting paid a little for our trouble! Thanks for commenting! ;)
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot of junk, but a good price for your labor.
ReplyDeleteOMY! That is amaaazing! My husband and I are looking to buy ten acres. We've driven on the land, and people use it as a dumping grounds. Crazy!
ReplyDeleteLove gettin' money for scrap! It's the best. But that's some hardwork! Got some weight lifting in!
ReplyDeleteWay to go! Cleaning up the land is a real "feel good" thing! We do a lot of brush burning every year. Your post made me think of our family dump that is up in the woods. Maybe we should start pulling the old scrap out and taking it in!
ReplyDeleteWe have hauled a many a load of scrap metal but most of ours was leftover metal from FarmMan's "projects".
ReplyDeleteRight now he is building a metal break from pieces from an old farm harrow.
He has quite a big collection of "project metal" around the farm now that I am hoping will get hauled to the scrap yard.
You both did a good job getting that much on the truck.
Have a great day.
Pam
apparently you find that in western illinois as well. :o/ i can't tell you how many loads of scrap and garbage we have pulled out of our creek...and we're not done!
ReplyDeletebtw...i found you though tonya @ magnanimous.blogspot. love your goats and your blog. :o)