Anybody get any good deals lately?

[Bushman]

Those 1/2 gallon canning jars usually go for a couple bucks each.

[NormandieStill]

I was at the sawmill the other day picking up some wood for the nw chicken run, and finally got to chat with the owner about barrel staves. They make them on site (quartersawn, split, then resawn) and age them in stacks. The stacks are baled, and sold as a lot to the cooperages. I asked if they happened to have any open aged stacks as I was interested in picking up a few staves, but couldn't justify a whole stack. We wandered over and had a look and sure enough, there was an unbaled stack of good and aged looking staves. I was left to choose what I wanted, and grabbed four pieces, two wide, two narrower. When I went to pay for them, he'd chatted with his dad (who actually deals with the stave manufacturing) and they had no idea of a price, so just said, pay what you feel. I offered 10€, they're happy with some cash, and I've got 4 pieces of weathered, dry french oak to experiment with making barrel heads with.

Now if I could just find a local source of American Oak, I'd be happy.

[stillkaren]

6.5 gallons, man Cranky, nice find!

I need to start hitting yard sales around here, when I was a kid everyone had a couple of those big glass jugs full of "next year's vacation" coins. I had one, it was lost in the first great war, along with a lot of other stuff. In fact, now that I think about it, my first wife's grandma had (6) 3 gallon jugs she made her wine in every year. She wasn't the only little Italian grandma around here making wine, it would be cool to find one of those stashes.

Rusty

I used to have one of those large glass jars and save coins for a major trip. It took years, but I eventually booked it in for a trip to https://orlandovacation.com/pages/unive ... ation-pkgs . It's funny how those jugs used to be everywhere but are now hard to come by. It would be great to come across a hoard like your wife's grandmother had!