Hillbilly Junk = Hipster Treasures

If you've ever driven through rural America, you've noticed junk heaps near homes. Decades of rusted metal and stuff piled about in various areas. We have our requisite piles here at Barren Creek Farm.

Over the years, every barn or shed no longer in use for agriculture production has been filled with junk... or treasure. Depends on how you look at things.

A city friend visiting from Dallas once asked me why it was that she saw this everywhere on her drive to our home. I simply asked her, "what do you do with your lawnmower when it dies?" She thought a moment and replied, "I just set it out by the trash at the curb and it disappears." With a smile, I replied, "well, I don't have a magical curb to make things disappear from my life." And that's mostly the truth of it.

It's complicated by the fact that, in the past, repair parts could prove difficult to locate, took a long time to receive (ordering and shipping) and were costly. So keeping a broken item around to rob parts from was a common approach to overcoming the inconvenience of rural life. The internet, overnight shipping, and rural trash pick up have eliminated most of the reasoning behind the piles.

Decades of saving things which may someday prove to have a purpose led to an accumulation of deteriorating junk and rats' nests. Finally, my brother was willing to dig in to the piles and face the nasty work of cleaning and sorting through the junk and treasure left in the barns and sheds on the farm. I can't emphasize how difficult this work has been. It's a dirty job. But, it was ridiculous to have multiple dry shelter buildings falling further into disrepair, the items in them decaying and piled to a point that you couldn't find anything if you needed.

For his first task, he cleaned out and sorted through the old dairy barn. Which developed my task, to clean, research and list the items we have salvaged from the debris for sale... so we can have some cash to continue our mission to save the family farm and develop a sustainable enterprise.

I have learned a lot about the items we have found. Who knew granny's old hand juicer would be of value to someone today? Or that barn full of decaying, gray wood is really full of highly prized, authentically aged "barn wood" and that antique jar just might complete someone's collection. Well, I did. It just took me well over a decade to convince those around me... who are still scratching their heads at the idea of selling some of this stuff and look bemused at the Pinterest pictures I show them. So far we've kept a good deal of it from the scrap yard. I keep telling them Hillbilly Junk is a Hipster's Treasure. But, really, you don't have to be a hipster to love these old items. Frankly, it can be hard to part with them once we've cleaned them and done a bit of research on their history and value.

For me, it's fun to clean the items and do the research to learn more about their history and value. I hope they will end up in the home of someone who genuinely appreciates them and can give them new purpose. Speaking of which, Granny had a lot of quart sized mason jars. Our families aren't as big and we won't use them for canning... at least not all of them. We have plenty left to sell!