Raised Bed Production

This Spring I came up with a great new source of free lumber.  There is a company nearby that purchases glass in bulk, making windows and doors for industrial situations.  They set the crates and skids outside their building with a sign saying "Free Lumber".  I avail myself of their lumber as needed, and have been able to build several nice raised beds as a result!

There are surely similar situations near where you live as well.  I obtained some great lumber from a sign company last year for the building of three other raised beds.  My thinking is that if there is lumber and other building materials to be had for free, why o why would anyone spend money on new lumber?  Why would us "Greenies" not do all we can to reuse, re-purpose, and recycle existing materials, instead of adding to the problem, enabling the lumber companies to continue making huge profits at the expense of our environment?

Anyway, here are a few shots of our raised beds for your personal enjoyment...

Wofati

So I'm wending my way through the permies.com website, and I cam across an article by Paul Wheaton titled "Wofati Eco Building".  What the...  So I read the article.  Paul is a guy who is very interested in building techniques that are really cheap, really cheap.  He is also one who desires to create structures that are made from local materials, preferably from your own land, or nearby, eco-friendly, quickly constructed, extremely durable.

I HAD a book by the name of "The $50 and Up How to Build an Underground House Book", by Mike Oehler.  I leant it to a friend, who decided he didn't want me building such a structure on his property, so he "lost" it.  Book?  What book?

Anyway, Mike Oehler has created some great, super-cheap houses from materials found on his own property, mostly.  Paul thought through Mike's ideas, visited Mike, visited other experts in the field, and made some interesting modifications, which you can read about here:

http://www.richsoil.com/wofati.jsp

I am very interested in this sort of thing, as I find that the housing industry is a joke.  Overpriced, under-built, low-quality housing without an iota of ecological leaning.  I say, "Go for broke"!  Under-price it, over-build it, max out the quality, and max out the eco!  Forget about building 2x4 houses completely.  There is absolutely NO reason to build the crap we've been building for the last 100 years or more.  There exists designs to tackle ALL aspects of green building TODAY, eliminating the need to order lumber from a lumber yard, order flooring from another store, order roofing from a roofing supplier, etc.  I'm interested in knowing your thoughts, whoever you are, so please leave a comment when you read this post.

Thanks,

Ciao,

Panchito