Life changes

Upon moving to our rural area farm and reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a long held lifestyle of recycling and organic gardening in a city was allowed to grow into a stronger commitment to life and health.  As we planned our home, we sought to make it as green as we could without being off the grid.  Our home is constructed of logs, minimally treated indoors with dilute linseed oil, plywood was avoided as much as possible, the poured concrete basement is faced with fieldstone from our land.  We insulated with cellulose and recycled denim instead of fiberglass.  Water runoff from the metal roof is captured in a cistern system that can be used for watering animals as soon as we get our fencing in order. We have planted trees in areas that would not be pastureland, dug a substantial garden that is handled organically with no weedkillers, no chemical fertilizers, included fruit trees and berry bushes and seek to grow as much of our none protein food as possible.  That which we can not yet grow, such as meat, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs, we buy locally from neighboring organic small farms.

I feel that we have made great strides in living locally and with an ear to the environment.  One area that still concerns me is garbage.  Our property has a large sinkhole that apparently had been used as a dump for years.  There were also well over 100 old tires surrounding the lower pasture in the edge of the woods.  Many loads of this garbage have been removed and hauled down to the garbage pick up center, but some of the larger pieces have been too difficult for us to remove ourselves.  Plans are being explored to enlist the aid of a local caving club interested in our sinkhole to help us remove those pieces this spring.

All vegetable scrap is composted.  All recycleables are taken to the center to be recycled, but still there are about 2 cans of "garbage" each month, that need to be hauled to the center to be compacted and hauled away to some landfill.  One of my goals has been to reduce this load further.  Each time an unwanted mailing is received, I contact the sender to cease sending, unfortunately our recycle center won't handle business paper or glossy catalogs and magazines.  I try to buy beans, rice and flour using reuseable jars and bags at the natural food store, but items like pet food still comes in a non compostable, non recyclable bags.  I don't want  to send it them the landfill, but also don't want to resort to burning it as the ash from those bags is not useable on the garden. I still am trying to solve how to reduce this garbage load.

The use of freecycle and Craig's list have helped to remove items that we don't want but still have a useful life, but we are still struggling with reducing our impact.  Live locally and responsibly and leave Mother Earth a better place.