Although it might not necessarily be a skill, one thing I have learned about at Highland Orchards reuse. Some people might call it hording or being cheap, but one of the interesting cultural practices we have at Highland is reuse. I call it cultural because it is not an official policy, but many of the employees and all of the managers follow the same code. Basically, we seem to find a spot to put anything, from an old board or pipe to a load of blacktop. If you look around the premise, it often seems like we don’t throw anything away- and I think overwhelmingly we really don’t generate that much trash.

Keeping things is only one side of the story. The whole purpose of hanging on to things that have the potential to be reused is to, you guessed it-reuse it. When working on building projects most people think “what can I get at Home Depot?”, but throughout my life, I first think “can I find that at the orchard?”.

One of my favorite “reuse it” projects was the greenhouse I built for my Cantaloupe crop in 2013. Thinking back, I don’t think I had to buy a single thing to make the greenhouse as every single part was reused.

To build it, I first constructed a frame out of scrap 2×4’s. Once my frame was done, I sealed it in using plastic construction drop cloth that we use for covering floors while painting. I found an old storm door and used that to make an access into the house. In order to keep temperatures warm, but not too warm, I built a makeshift heating and ventilation system. To provide the heat, I piped in the waste heat from the dryer at my house using reused aluminum vent pipes. To prevent the greenhouse from overheating on warm spring days, I set up a ventilation system. This system used a thermostat taken out of an old furnace, a box fan, a broken extension cord, and a vent from an air handling system. I wired it together and I had an automatic vent that engaged at a certain peak temperature. The system worked well, as I had practically 100% germination for over 1000 melon seeds using only reclaimed materials.

Without the salvaged materials that were saved at the orchard, my greenhouse would have been much too expensive and impractical. However, keeping so much stuff does come at a cost. Often workspaces are cluttered and it is very difficult to find things. This causes a lot of frustration for workers who need to get a job done quickly. I have recently wondered about the economics of reusing things. Is it cheaper to get rid of scrap and used materials in favor of having a more streamlined operation? I think it would be very interesting study since reusing materials usually saves money in terms of cost of materials, but it takes up space and impedes rate of labor and productivity.