I have been staring at a pile of barrels on my property as well. My thought was to pack them with earth like a tire wall but hopefully a lot less labor intensive. My barrels are plastic so that solves the rust problem but I'm afraid they will bulge and burst under the pressure of packing them out. I believe using a "dead-man" to hold them into the berm is necessary was well. Re-bar dead-man is all I've come up with so far.
Any thoughts? If anyone has tried this I would appreciate any feed back!