We have been constantly on the lookout for both tools and materials on Craigslist.  We just found a very interesting listing that offered bamboo for anyone willing to dig the bamboo out of the guy’s garden. He was only charging a dollar per bamboo stalk and it was free if we took at least 25. Needless to say, we jumped at the offer since we are planning to use bamboo for indoor accessories; support for temporary structures; possibly garden arches and even the roofing for an outdoor fireplace.  We have purchased a slammer tool from The Bamboo Garden. It is an expensive tool; but we figured it would be helpful in many other ways. Since we don’t own a truck or big vehicle; we decided to show up at the guy’s place in Alan’s convertible. We figured we would be able to carry the bamboo poles once we put the top down. Needless to say the guy was surprised when we showed up and didn’t hide his disbelief when he saw our car. He asked if we actually planned to take the poles in THAT and we nodded vehemently. He then took us to his bamboo clump; which turned out to be taller than we expected. The only condition was that we wouldn’t leave any leaves on his garden; lest they take root elsewhere. He then left to run errands and we started working away. An hour and a half later we only had 12 or 13 stalks taken down. We decided to drag the poles to our car; strip off the leaves and load up the car. We had to cut most of the poles into 2 halves. The photos and videos below tell the whole story. Alan used his belt to tie the poles together. I sat on the back to help with the navigation.  We tried to avoid the gaze of other motorists on the way home. Fortunately, our neighbors were not out. Else, we would have had a lot of explaining to do! We then discovered that the bamboo needs a cool dry place to ‘dry’. This meant we couldn’t leave them outside. We dropped off the leaves to compost in our back and dragged the bamboo poles inside the house.  Also, we called the guy back to say that we would return the following weekend to take another lot of 12/13 stalks and he was cool with that. We figured we could take the bamboo to the land once we have put down some pallets and have a tarp to cover them. Meanwhile, Alan’s colleague told him of a publicly available clump of bamboo plants in the Potomac area. Apparently people come there all the time to take bamboo stalks. It is nice to see people getting excited about this project and offering information! To cut a long story short; we scheduled a time the following weekend to cut some more bamboo at the guy’s garden. But we got held up waiting on a farmer who was supposed to meet us to show his backhoe to us. So we had to postpone the bamboo cutting to another day.