I was just reading the post before mine and it can be very true, the small town helping you out.
I had no money at all when I "bought" my house. I did find two local backers that believed in me because they had seen my work ethic for 15 years.
I have always been surprised at the way people around here have thought of me and my haunted house by giving me old piles of lumber and strange objects that somehow made them think of "me"?
A painting contractor used to give me many free gallons of new paint every year, we finally had to ask him to stop!
The local electrician has always been very generous with his knowledge and has helped me in emergencys with never a thought for me to pay him, he even gave me some brand new 100 amp circuit breaker boxes and just asked me to replace them in his inventory when I got around to it.
A man in the concrete business came down here and gave me maybe a yard of concrete off his truck for nothing and at that time I had no money at all, but the need for the concrete was very important at that moment.
I was given a very sound farmhouse to demo for the lumber just for the ripping out and trucking away.
Customers of mine from many times very far away from here have given me often times usefull and neat things including masks that I had never knew were ever made before, still in excellant condition.
Then illustrating the old saying concerning "Taking the bad with the good", when I had no fencing around my yard people would dump truck loads of old appliances and parts of things down into my yard and drive away before I was awake or home. Sometimes much later someone might tell me they gave me these things and they genuinely thought I could find a way to make use of the items.
Yes old micro waves have numerous micro switches in them, but how many micro waves do I need ? No more, thank you.
People can be very considerate much of the time.
