Sunday, April 02, 2006

A real old-time Mainer

Recently pricing out lumber for the chicken palace, we experienced sticker shock, so decided we would be looking for ways to reduce start-up costs for the operation. We placed an ad looking for metal roofing in Uncle Henry's classified ad magazine (a reading must here in Maine).

Well, we got a call that someone in Newcastle had some stainless steel roofing.... hmmm, I thought, stainless steel? Still, it was the only call we got, so off we went. Our salesman was quite the entrepeneur. It seems he's been working on an expansion of the local grocery store, and had been expertly salvaging materials. I love this -- why let perfectly good materials head off to the biomass energy recovery plant (i.e. incinerator) when you can use them at home? This is old-time Maine at its best, thriftily re-using readily available materials in clever ways. Why buy new when free is available?

It seems the stainless steel sheet metal was from the produce coolers, which had been dismantled. Thick pieces of styrofoam insulation were also available for sale. Our salesman was busily constructing himself a splendid new boat shed with lumber remnants. For $10, we came home with 2 large pieces of stainless steel. Our chickens will be living in style, they may not need stainless steel kitchen appliances, but they'll have the stainless look anyway with their roof gleaming in the sun.

No comments: