Guess what we got last week?
Yep… our own official burn barrel!
It’s a country thing. Everyone has them. You get to burn all sorts of stuff out here and no one freaks out! It’s weird.
And our lovely model only cost $7! Yep, a steal for sure! And ours was so special, it was coated in used motor oil for FREE! How cool is that?
Well, today we installed our burn barrel back by the barn in our soon to be excess material handling facility. It’s where our burn pile is, as well as some day our animal manure processing center. Not to be confused with our garden composting center, which is over by the garden. Which might be moving to over by the barn, but I’m not sure yet. We’ll see.
Anyway… here is our first wagon load of stuff that will be toasted soon! Given to the rural burn gods!
In a classic teen bonding moment, a “Do as I say, not as I do” hillbilly mom moment… I managed to get my teenager laughing her head off at me when I dosed some cardboard with a bit of gas and threw a lit match in the barrel and proceeded to nearly get knocked on my butt as the thing flashed on me! haha… no need for any eyebrow work for a few weeks!
Needless to say, we learned a great deal, laughed a bunch more and had a nice time sitting and watching a bunch of trash burn.
Awww….. rural fun!
Doesn’t Maggie look like she’s enjoying this new chore on her list, just a wee bit too much???
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Please consider kerosene rather than gasoline for starting fire in burn barrel!
HI!
Yes, I think I will avoid that the next time… I think just a little bit of cardboard burning will get it going nicely! Thanks for reminding me to be a little safer!
Sherri
Don’t burn your cardboard, use it to control weeds. Lay cardboard down between the rows in your vegetable garden, around shrubs or fruit trees. Spray with a hose to wet the cardboard. Then top with spoiled hay (lots of weed seeds in spoiled hay though), or lawn clippings, or autumn leaves.
Earthworms love to eat cardboard, it smothers weeds, and helps to keep moisture in the soil. By next year the cardboard and “toppings” will be broken down to compost / organic matter and can be dug in to improve your soil.
Ah, that does sound like a good idea. We get a LOT of cardboard from our mail order company, we try and reuse the boxes as we can, but rocks and minerals tend to really weaken them. I will have to try and save some of the bigger sheets for my garden!!!
-sherri
Old newsprint works great in flowerbeds under mulch to keep weeds from popping up again and also keeps new weeds (from blown seeds) becoming established as the roots can’t penetrate the newsprint, so it’s easier to pull them (also, the weeds don’t like the ink of the newsprint). Use the regular newsprint, not the shiny colored flyers. The newsprint also helps hold water in the soil so it doesn’t dry out so quickly, resulting in less need for watering. Place a couple sheets thickness around the plants, wet it with a hose (so it won’t blow away) then cover with bark mulch. It’s an inexpensive substitute for landscape cloth. (Or should I say landscape cloth is a more expensive alternative since newsprint has been used like this for a lot longer. 😉 )
Hi Sherri,
I don’t know about your county regulations, but when we had a burn barrel we put air holes around the sides toward the bottom and middle so the garbage at the bottom would burn thoroughly. Without them the unburned garbage at the bottom gets smothered as the stuff on the top burns and those ashes fall. My ex used an axe to chop 5 or 6 vertical slots around the barrel about 6 inches from the bottom. Making them vertical keeps the air holes from being blocked off by falling ash.
We also found a piece of scrap expanded metal (where they cut slits in the sheet of metal and pull it so it makes a grate) to put over the top so that the burning ashes wouldn’t fly out and land in the brush to catch fire. Having a mesh cover on the burn barrel was our county regulation but that was in California where the grass is tinder dry except for a couple of weeks in February. I think it’s also the regulations in Washington if I remember (an ex-boyfriend’s folks lived there). You may try talking to your fireman friends (since you already have been introduced 😉 to see what you need to do.
Ah, great ideas! Ours does have some holes in the bottom, the fellow put them in for us to help them drain. It’s super wet and green here, but we mowed the area all down short to help keep any ash from smoldering anything dry. I like the idea of a grate over the top, I will keep my eye out for something like that. We’ve already learned now that having a stirring pole is a good thing, to help keep the stuff on the bottom from just laying there. I suspect that once we get caught up a bit and we get our regular pickup going, the novelty of the burn barrel will wear off a bit. haha… but you never know…
Thanks!
just to let you know, we burn everything…..you name it, it gets burned…i have three kids and a boy friend…when it comes to closet cleaning the burn barrel is a friend. my kids get into cleaning out, they bring bags of outgrown clothing, old board games, etc. i ask them at the barrel, do you want it burned….they say yep. and in it goes…burnt and forgotten.
my boy friend goes through a ton of work clothing…..he gives it to me and it gets burned…no matter what….shirts, pants, raincoat.
i really dont think we could live without our burn barrel. i love it.