Here's a list of things we recycle:

Barrels into misc. containers, rain barrels, wood burners, and see items around the site they can be used for- wood fired laundry drier, holding anti-freeze for storing cold in ice house. Barrels have so many uses on a farm!

Furnace Boxes - I wanted to convert furnace boxes into large package mail boxes and sell on eBay since so many people ship from home and the standard mail box just doesn't hold much. They could also be made into enclosed bike trailors by adding wheels, containers and so many other things. Another useful item it could be is to convert it to an solar oven (add recycled glass).

But here's my favorite recycling idea for used furnace boxes:

Turn them into gel fireplaces. Alcohol gel fireplaces need no venting as they burn so clean. Gel fuel can be made inexpensively by slowly mixing chalk with vinegar until dissolved. Once dissolved, mix in your alcohol slowly until it is the consistancy you want. Put the gel in tin cans you've recycled into burners and light.

Just gut out the box, paint and add a shlf to hold the tin cans. Add some stones for the fire to burn through and cover the tin cans. Light and enjoy.

Here's another:

Use all safety precautions as with any fireplace because these can get just as hot as gas burning fireplaces. To get the "cracking sound" of a real fire- add a few drops of water at the end and mix well. The water droplet crack when burning. To get more light from alcohol gel burners (since they burn clean you don't get much light) add a little pine tree sap, citronella if using outside or even a little scented oil. Please note that if anyone gets a headache when burning these - its because of the additive like pine sap or oil.

Alcohol fuel gel can be used in outdoor fireplaces where polluting fumes are undesirable, for cooking fuel (it is manditory for cooking on ships).

This kind of heat is clean and re-newable. There are no regulations I'm aware of that stop you from producing value added alcohol products that sell for $20 a gallon or more. So, make sure any fireplaces you sell have your name on them as the person to contact to refill the tin can gel! You may have a customer for life. See more examples on Google Images

Old table clothes, sheets and cutains - besides quilts, old table clothes can be made into napkins and other types of left over materials can make rag rugs. A favorite in our house would be wool rag rugs.

Glass jars (wine bottles, pop bottles, food jars) can all continue being food containers. Or, add a wick and glass chimney from Lehmans.com and turn the old bottle into romantic candle light. EarthShips.com builds bottles into walls for some interesting effects and there is always the option of melting them down to make all kinds of optional items.

Tires can be cut down into shoe soles and actually be tied over shoes that have lost thier sole or sewn on. Netflix has amovie about how a tribe in Africa only wears these for runnng - and the runners are in thier 60s. No shin splints and sore feet. . . and the tread lasts forever. Tires can be cut into strips and woven into heavy duty floor mats. The can be used in the landscape to keep weeds back like tree borders, lawn edging and more. Some people stack them and grow potatoes in them though its recommended to line the interior. They can be retaining walls and even more - they can stacked and stuffed with earth to be building walls. (See EarthShips.com)

Freezers, refrigerators - as you have seen from our website - these can be made into food driers or smoke houses. They can also be outdoor storage for food in the winter as a backup food storage place. One of the things I hope to do with an old freezer is to convert it into a hatchery on a large scale of 100+ birds a shot. The chest freezers can also double as a place to get them through the first few tender days. and some are big enough to hold some baby goats or a lamb with a heat lamp on a cold day. If I can find enough of them - one might even get cut up to be a winter waterer for the larger animals that can reach that high. They also are great to use if you do worm farming as you can bury them a few inches down to level them and add food scraps all winter. They can be made into fish tanks (see the auquaculture pages and links).

Tin cans - we have a can opener that leave the lid able to put it back on the can even though we have no way of re-connecting it, it does make using only 1/2 a can of something easy to put in the frig with the lid on it. Some people are flattening cans to make shingles, covers can also be small shingles (over a dog house, chicken coop). If you are making alcohol - see the above Furnace Boxes uses and fill them with fuel gel. They can (of course) still be pencil holders, seedling planters and candle holders.

Hot water tanks can be used to store compressed air if you are using them as a battery system. They can be wood burners and holding tanks for solar hot water systems. If they are old electric tanks, they have no central pipe and can be cut in half for feeders, watering tanks and other useful farm items. If they have the central pipe, they can be modified into simple snow auger plow or sort of small tractor bucket where the auger can be welded to rotate the snow (or dirt) to the side. Others have welded several tanks together to make floats for pontoon boats.

Motors and alternators of course have endless uses. Whether converting an exersize bike into peddle power, converting them into wind or hydro generation systems, or making a dairy milking system, they will always have 100s of applications around.

Glass windows are worth storing if you have the space. They can be used in the garden for cold frames, glued to walls to make back-splashes behind counters or the count itself just like tile. They can be made to plant shelves or built into hot water solar systems. Collect enough of them and they have any continuity of size, you have a hard glass greenhouse - which will last 20 times longer than any plastic.

Cardboard is our main way to keep down weeds in the row crops. It goes down and mulch sits on top. This kills off everything under it and keeps weeds down for free. Some people use it for insulating out buildings but when I tried that - our pony didn't like the new wall treatment and promptly removed it.

These are just a few of the things we recycle here and please feel free to send us your recycling tips!