Yesterday saw us add 23 more tires to our cache of building blocks. The weather is challenging these days. It is alternately warm and mushy (the snow) and cold and frozen (the snow).

My brother Tom dropped off my dad’s utility trailer (our tire gathering vehicle) on his way to his cabin project in Bridge Lake. Chris hooked up the trailer and we headed off to our piano recital. Chris and I and the other adult students of our piano teacher had a “get together” so that we could play our pieces for each other. Usually we join the kid group. Our adult session was much less nerve-wracking, although it is still a mystery to me why younger kids have no fear and we adults seem to get all wound up before playing…

At any rate, after piano recital I thought to peer into the back of the trailer and there was about 6″ of ice in it that had accumulated over the winter. No amount of shoveling would remove it. Never mind, I thought, there’s probably only five or six tires to be had at the Barriere Landfill.

The Barriere Landfill or, “the dump” as it is better known, recently underwent some major changes. Our regional district implemented new recycling rules in the new year. We have finally caught up to the efforts of major cities. We now have a blue bag recycling program and a pay for dumping charge on anything we can’t/don’t recycle. In general I support this. My parents and my generation has become very much a throw away society and these measures will make us really think about what we are consuming and how we deal with it afterward.

On the other hand, there have been some mutterings that it will only increase the wonton throwing away of garbage on back roads. So far I have not heard that this has become an issue, but I will be interested to see if it does.

It wasn’t too cold yesterday, but it sure was windy. About 125 tires had accumulated at the Barriere dump since our last foray there in November. A full 23 were the size we needed.

Chris was a bit choked because he wanted to get over the 200 mark (see updated tire counter at the bottom of the blog). Given some of the design changes we made during the last few months, Chris now believes we only need about 900 tires. One hundred less to find and cart around, but more importantly, 100 fewer to pound with dirt!