Peacock Orchard

The Wonderful World of Pallets

A post by Orchard Husband

I love the versatility of pallets. I looked around to see if there was a guru on making almost anything from pallet wood; and while there are hundreds of sites that have “80-100 uses for pallets” I didn’t find any site dedicated solely to making fine products using free pallet wood.

A week or so ago my wife asked me about upgrading out kitchen. One of the upgrades was building a sort of wall using reclaimed pallet wood. Sort of like this. So, the first thing you have to figure out is where to get your pallets. Pallets can be had for free at most places, try your local hardware stores, the one where we live has a designated area where they stack pallets and anyone is welcome to grab what they need.

Once you have a nice stack* of pallets (*do or/don’t go overboard, there is a lot of wood to be had if you grab some good pallets with plenty of boards on them, you can always use the pallets for other projects). you need to separate the deck boards from the stringer or blocks (depending on the design of the pallet) as the pallet wall will consist entirely of deck board. Now, there are a lot of ways to do this, some with varying degrees of difficulty.

Pry bar method:

I did this back when we lived in Japan, as I provided the firewood for a couple bonfires at the beach we went to. I could only fit two good size intact pallets in my station wagon, but if I broke them down into the individual deck boards and stringers I could usually get around seven to eight pallets worth of wood in the same space. Since I was using this at the beach I had to remove the nails, so this method is a pain. You can find 100s of videos on you tube, and if you are going to use pallet wood for a wall I would not recommend this method as I splits about 99.9% of the wood.

Leverage with 2x4s:

I saw a video where some guy was using a couple of 2x4s, placing them adjacent to the deck board they wanted to pry up on each side and using it to lift the wood out safely and without breaking any of the wood. I had moderate success and moderate failure with this, for a couple reasons.

How can you be successful with this method? You need to have a pallet with good spacing where you can even get a 2×4 or whatever size wood you are using to pry the deck boards off with. The deck boards have to be in pretty decent condition. And the extra boards you need to make your fulcrum have to be pretty long or they’ll just slide and cause problems.

How can you fail miserably with this method? Use a pallet with weathered deck board, or boards with minute cracks and the they’ll just shatter when you try to lift them up. if the deck boards are too narrow to put your levers in, it won’t work. The wider the prying tool the better. I tried to use a couple tamping bars and they just shattered the wood.

So, if the pallets are in decent shape and have enough spacing you can recover the deck boards pretty easily with little to no damage. You’ll just have to hammer out all the nails.

Pallet break down tool:

I didn’t actually use this method, I just saw a couple videos on youtube, and it’s basically the same principle as the leverage method. but you weld some metal bars together along with your handle (the longer the better), place the slots in between the boards and pull up, and the board come out. I think this method would work pretty well, and if you were going to be doing lots of pallet projects I’d invest in building one of those tools.

Cutting with a reciprocating saw:

I ended up doing this method on 98% of the boards we ended up using. Lots of youtube videos showing you how to do this method. but a few takeaways I have. Invest in a 10-12 inch all purpose blade. there are going to be pieces of wood and widths where it’ll save you a lot of time and effort. Also, to leave the nails in or not. Some people say it gives the deck boards character, and if you want to leave them, be my guest, but some of them are a little loose and it’s best to just remove them. One youtube video I watched talked about using a nail punch to remove them. I just used a nail and I’d tamp out the bits and pull them out with a claw hammer.

It is also nice to have some sort of tool to separate the wood a bit for the deck board pieces that don’t have any gaps to put the saw blade in between. It should take a couple seconds to go through each board if you are hitting the nail only. If it takes any longer than that, you are sawing through wood and I’ve heard of people that have killed their reciprocating saw breaking down pallets.

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After you have your wood just sand and stain, but I’ll leave that post to my wife to explain.

Country kitchen remodel stage 1 of 5 in process

I was driving home from work recently when my mind finally figured out a problem in our kitchen design. The trash can was the problem. We had no other place to put it in the kitchen. At least we thought we didn’t. Last year I’d removed the drawers from one of our base cabinets. They were falling apart and their location made them a haven for mice. We’ve since fixed the mouse problem by purchasing this product and filling all the small holes and cracks in the house with it. We seriously haven’t seen a mouse since we did it. Life saver!

Anyway, so I had this blank base cabinet I was never getting around to turning into a pot rack. The trash fit nicely into it. With the trash moved I could finally take down a pointless wall that divided the kitchen from the laundry room. The kids enjoyed helping, and with hammers and eye protection passed around that wall came down. It did an amazing job opening up the space. It feels so much larger now. However, I had a damaged wall that I was going to have to do something with. We need somewhere to put our coats and boots. That has always been a problem in our household as the coats always seem to collect on the dining room table. So I planned to make mudroom cubbies. However, we liked the open feel so much I couldn’t see ruining it with cubbies. Thus we are doing a simple coat rack, a movable bench, boot trays and some wire baskets nailed to the wall. It was decided we would plank the wall from the kitchen into the laundry room to make the rooms flow better, as they are currently different colors. Once that was decided my mind took off and now we have a 5 stage remodel project that is going to change everything.

Stage 1- planking the wall, beautifying current cabinets installed on planked wall, new faucet and sink, open shelves to replace 1 wall cabinet.

Stage 2- moving the fridge and building a pantry.

Stage 3- remove cabinets, wall, and old island and build large island in it’s place.

Stage 4- lighting and fixing the ceiling as we currently have 2 recessed fluorescent lights.

Stage 5- fixing the flooring throughout.

So far in stage 1 I have boxed in the top of the wall cabinets that will remain. I always hated the space above them as it wasn’t enough to do anything with. I removed the wall cabinet and made and installed floating shelves. I’ve hung 3 coat racks in the laundry room. Seems excessive but we had a lot of wasted space in there so….. why not. I’ve ordered the sink and faucet and the Ardex required to cement coat our current counter tops. I’m still looking for planking wood. I think I want to use old fence panels and a local fencing company said they would call me when they had some I could take. I also need to purchase a bench and the boot trays I’ve decided on. Slow going as I am working full time, a mom and a farmer. Going all the same!

Here are a few pics of the wall demo. As you can see I got a bit nuts when we moved in and painted the kitchen a CRAZY mixture of reds, yellows and oranges. My cabinets are red….it’s horrible.

This is the coat rack getting screwed in.

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Bonterra Merlot 2012 and Merlot Bellavitano cheese

Wine:

Bonterra Merlot 2012- Organic $14.99

[from back of bottle] Our merlot is barrel aged to accentuate the distinctive cherry-berry flavors and subtle aromas of cranberry and chocolate.

Cheese:

Merlot Bellavitano $5.25

[from their website] By wedding this rich, creamy cheese to the berry and plum notes of Merlot, we’ve created a marriage of flavors destined to make your taste buds say, “I do.”

Wine Review-

This wine is fantastic. It matches its description pretty well. We think you can taste the cherry accents in the wine. The wine obviously pairs well with the cheese. We think this wine would go really well with bold flavored dinner. I want to try it with beef borginoun this winter. I think that would pair fantastically. All around great wine. Drink it casually while watching the sun set or with a good meal, just drink it!

Cheese Review–

The cheese is grainy, salty and has a strong taste. I didn’t like it alone but it does go well with the wine. My husband’s exact words were, “good, yummy, very good cheese but I wouldn’t eat it alone.” So grab this cheese with some bread or crackers and the suggested wine for the best experience.

Straw as mulch in the garden

This years garden has been a pretty good success. Some failures but mostly awesome success. So I want to expand. I want more, always more. Our soil is a problem and so are weeds. The soil I imported for this years garden was infested with lambs quarter. That has been a real challenge. I have used straw in the raised bed with good success so I wanted to do it all with straw this fall and plant into it this spring a la Ruth Stout.

The problem for me is finding straw. The straw I bought for my straw bale garden may have possibly been sprayed with something, leading to it’s failure. I didn’t want hay because of the seeds, of course. I thought I wanted wheat straw. As an organic wheat selling mega house state I knew I could find that. In fact it’s stacked up in front of our house some years. Wouldn’t it figure that the only seller I could find was in Colorado then. What a trial.

We decided we’d drive down and grab a bunch of straw for our driveway (that will be another post) and my expanded garden areas. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. It’d be about an hour round trip which isn’t too bad if you don’t have to take 2 toddlers with you. So, about a mile from our house has been sitting an estimated 8 large round bales of straw. They have exploded everywhere and been abandoned for a little over 2 weeks. They obviously fell off of someones truck and they decided it wasn’t worth it to pick them up. Luckily, it’s worth it to me. I grabbed the kids this Saturday, put all our rubber boots and work gloves on (yes my children have adorable tiny work gloves) and a tarp and set off in our SUV.

I did 6 loads on Saturday (2 without the kids) and 3 loads today. I have accumulated a nice stack of straw in one of my garden areas. TONS more to pick up still. It’s almost free (I’m counting gas as a cost) and it’s AMAZING. It’s chock full of bugs at this point which thrills my birds. It amuses the kids to grab a few loads and I couldn’t be more pleased with someone else’s misfortune. Now to finish grabbing what I need and spread it around evenly.

Ambiance Pinot Grigio 2013 and Courenne Double Cream

Wine:

Ambiance Pinot Grigio 2013 $9.99

[Sourced from Wine Express] Fruit for the Belle Ambiance Pinot Grigio was harvested in the cool hours of the night, delivered to the winery and then immediately pressed into fermenters. A slow, low-temperature fermentation on very low grape solids and aging that took place entirely in stainless steel allowed us to capture all of the delicate fruit and floral aromas that a Pinot Grigio can deliver. Delicate aromas of lemon blossoms, honeysuckle, tropical fruits, white peaches and jasmine flowers. It shows luscious flavors of white nectarines, tart lemons and sweet honeydew melon. This medium-bodied wine is crisp and bright, with a tangy and lingering finish. It scored 92 points in the Critics Challenge Wine Competition.

Cheese:

Courenne Double Cream $6.99/lb

Ah now this is a tough one. I Googled this cheese to see how it is described and found quite a few descriptions of Brie Courenne. We bought this cheese at a local cheese shop in Ft Collins, CO.

Wine Review-

This wine was nice. Crisp. Enjoyable. Not my favorite white wine but certainly lovely all the same. I thought the cheese went well with it (but the cheese was awesome). I think this would be a great bottle of wine to bring to a dinner of fish or chicken. All around good wine.

Cheese Review-

This cheese was amazing. Seriously delicious. It was like a flavorful butter. We ate it with a hot baguette and we ate ALL of it. I don’t usually eat the cheeses, I leave that to Husband. However, even I loved this cheese. We are most certainly going to get this cheese again.

Fall planting plans

Last week was unseasonably cold. I was becoming concerned we were going to have a freeze before my garden was done. Thankfully we did not. It did have us thinking about our fall planting plans though. So much to do before winter and I keep adding seeds to the mix. Here is a short list of what we are going to plant:

Egyptian Walking Onions

I purchased the bulbs off of Etsy and I’m hoping the reviews were correct and they work wonders for me. We have issues growing onion and I’m not quite sure why. They never get particularly large, if they grow at all. I’m hoping this variety changes that!

Garlic

These little bulbs are the result of letting your garlic scrapes grow and go to seed. Purchased from the same Etsy seller as the onions I realize I’ll be waiting 2 years to get the benefit of this planting. Still, the quantity is enough that when I get a harvest it will be huge.

Winter Barley

https://greencoverseed.com/species/1054

We bought an acres worth of winter barley. It is an experiment for us. I am hoping to get some for eating, some for animal forage and my husband wants some for beer.

Nitro Radish

https://greencoverseed.com/species/1060

I bought nitro radish as an experiment in loosening our farm compacted land. I’m interested to see what it does for our soil quality and if it distracts the ground animals from my trees, all the better.

Dryland pasture seed

I bought this seed last year and threw out 2 acres this spring. I still have 2 acres of seed sitting in my garage. I’m going to spread it around the parts of our land that are not growing much of anything. I’m interested to see how successful winter sowing pasture is here.

Alfalfa

Alfalfa is another seed I bought quite a few acres of an simply didn’t plant all of in this spring. I’m going to be seeding it in areas I think can use the nitrogen (like our tree line) and areas that simply need something more than dirt growing. So that is all we have going on for winter sowing. We have about acres worth of seed. Should be an interesting experiment