Have I told you, we love our truck?  Yeah, we do.  We actually sold our car because we just never use it.  Anytime we leave the homestead, for the most part, is for errands and pickup or delivery.  Post office = lots of boxes and such…  Feed Store = animal hay, feed and bedding…  Big City = lumber and machine pick up or groceries…  about 80% of everything we leave the homestead for is to get something.  We don’t do a lot of just socializing or hitting the town for fun, we live far enough out that going to town is combined with a pick up or drop off of something.  So, in life of keeping things simple, we sold our car and just have the truck now.  Works for us.

Like how we have been stockpiling cheap fire wood for our two wood stoves.  Our lumber yard we love always has these little bundles of trim and cut offs available for a buck a bundle!   What a deal.  Sure it burns kind of fast but it makes GREAT kindling and it burns well enough when you are around and tending the fire.  So we always get five or ten bundles just because.   And often they have the heavier and harder wood cut offs for $5 a pallet load.  That’s a great deal too because it’s easy and a great size for burning.  And dry and easy to just throw in the wood box and use.  Since we are at the lumber yard at leas once or twice a week, we are trying to see if we can heat the shop with just waste from the business!  Wouldn’t that be a keen thing?

We also found these giant pink cut off rolls of lovely shipping foam at a local shipping supplier.  $5 to $8 a roll!  This time if was $20 for all that material.  Just one little 150 foot roll of bubble wrap at Walmart is $19.99.  We got about 10 times as much for the same price.  And it’s the end cuts off manufacturing anti-static foam so we’re keeping another thing local and re-used!  Well, it was never used… I guess just giving a by product a great use!  Protecting our beautiful looms and woodworking on their delivery journey.

And the last stop is a new spindle sander.  We’re not to the point yet that we can afford the really expensive, super heavy duty tools so we have to replace ours now and then from Harbor Frieght. We love their coupons and actually, several of the machines we used from them have really stood the test of our 7 day a week, 8 to 10 hours a day test.  We really push these machines to their limit, so it’s nice to see some hang in there and give it their all.  But the spindle sander just really died and it was time for another of these very valuable sanders!  So we stopped for that, too!

Thanks Tiffany!   Our love goes to you, ya big old Ford beauty!!!