When the notion first struck me to repurpose patinaed farm equipment and galvanized sheet metal scrap, I was enjoying some windshield time while clocked-in, taking a slow spin around the Kubota Tractor Dealership’s yard in Troy, Missouri.
I had just bought a Kubota from Austin Graeler for my employer, and my focus kept drifting back to the display rows interspersed with rusted equipment. After some deliberation, wearing grooves in the gravel as I circled them, I settled on an antique manure wagon.
Knowing Austin for the amicable man he is, I drove right back up to the front and offered him $200 for it, and he threw in delivery.
Being the planning man I am, while Austin was working the logistics of delivery, I called my friend Ron Weiss, a retired sheet metal worker, and then rang Ron Daniels, the man who knows everyone in Troy.
Ron D mapped out a few backroads with farmers who had no need for their scrap metal sheets laying rusted in fields.
I waited until morning so as not to poke my then sleeping bear of a friend Jimmy Bricker, my confidant and buddy, and he offered his Herculean aid in loading the pillaged eight-foot lengths.
Fast forward through the grunt work, and off we drove, back to my house, where we laid them in the backyard.
Ron Weiss visited the next day ready to weld, and within two days, the slanted roof of my repurposed firewood bin had been put in place.
After that, all that was left was stocking my antique firewood bin, and bargain-hunting sturdy bundles of wood in Troy is easier than pie. FC
