The toolbox project for the Willits Energy Farm is now complete. Jason and I installed the hinges and door latch on Friday and today the box was painted with two coats of oil based primer. The paint dries quickly and the box is ready to be hauled down to the farm site tomorrow. We expect that the white primer paint will protect the wood from the elements and we feel that it is a good base color for local artists or students interested in decorating the box.

Our guess is that the box weighs about 250-300 pounds, and it will therefore not be easy to move. Arrangements have been made to have the box loaded into a truck and transported to the middle of the farm site. From the middle of the site we will use up to four people to carry it to its final resting spot near the backstop.

Now that we have a safe place to store our tools it will be quite easy to arrive at the site and begin work. It is amazing what a pain it is to carry tools to and from the farm site. A place for storage is indeed a crucial piece of farm infrastructure. It was wonderful to use scrap materials to construct the frame and it really saved on the cost of the box.

I was thinking about the many homes that are renovated or remodeled, wondering where much of the older material goes. I think we can all guess where...the landfill. I’m sure it seems obvious how wasteful this practice is. Lumber is traded as a commodity and there is a large amount of imbedded energy in glass. These items are quite valuable--why do we simply throw them away? After scrap material is cleaned or processed it is again useful for other purposes. I know that we can use these materials in Willits to build compost bins, cold frames, a toolbox, seed start flats, construct a portion of the wood frame and glass elements of a glass greenhouse, a chicken coop, a chicken tractor frame, and support walls for raised garden beds. We cannot allow these materials to simply go up in smoke or be buried in a landfill. As the energy used to make glass or harvest, process, and transport lumber becomes more and more expensive, it will serve our projects and our communities better if we reuse these items. A non-profit in Portland, Oregon, The ReBuilding Center, has already anticipated this idea and offers the community the service if utilizing salvaged material from home renovation. Check it out this remarkable project: http://rebuildingcenter.org/ .