Trashing The Planet (or at least one little corner of it)

[3 Horse Ranch]

We moved on to this place about 20 months ago to get it ready for my brother (who is blind) and his horses and dogs. It has involved a lot of work, fencing in the pasture, building a dog run, putting in a patio walkway and stairs. The most recent project got me a little ticked off at the previous owners. About 1 acre of ground is separated from the main pasture and was basically unusable because it was covered in blackberries on one end, and in the middle the previous owner and scraped off the soil to build a shop and never got any further leaving a large pile of dirt growing weeds. The rest of it was rough and uneven enough to about throw me out of the tractor seat if I weren't belted in.

I started by poisoning the blackberries last fall. It was relatively warm and dry around Christmas so we started taking out the blackberry vines. I couldn't believe the amount of junk those berries were hiding. It included scrap metal which included broken machinery, school bus seats, hundreds of feet of wire rope from 1/4 to 7/8", a big coil of TV cable, a busted boat trailer, enough scrap to fill a pickup and 20 ft. trailer full. There was rotting wood, treated wood and what appear to be slabs cut off of logs in a portable sawmill, fiberglass pipe, plastic pipe, broken plastic planters. There was also 12 tires some still mounted on wheels. The most annoying thing I found was baling twine, it was everywhere. It was on the ground, in the ground, intertwined in the roots of the aforementioned blackberries, every time I thought I hat it all I found more. When I finally got all of the twine and junk hauled away (5 pickup loads besides the scrap metal) I did my best to level the ground out. After I leveled it, I rototilled it. Found more baling twine, seriously, the shaft of the rototiller looked more like the net spool on a purse seiner.

I don't know how common it is for people in rural areas to throw their discards on a part of their property. Just driving around the Skagit Valley, it seems evident by the broken machines and piles of scrap with weeds growing through them scattered around the valley that it is or at least was a common practice with many of the previous generations. A lot of stuff takes a very long time to break down (baling twine for example) is there really any reason for people the just throw all that stuff on the ground?

It is my goal to leave this property a lot better and cleaner than when we found it, I wish everyone would have the same goal.

 

[jay3534]

I feel for you as I am 3 years into cleaning this place up. High tensile fence, 2 foot tall fencing as they had pot belly pigs, trash pile with glass / old cans etc., concreted in rotten posts, at least a 100 pallets in edge of woods. Why do people do this?
The bailing twine is an issue with me as we have horses and are diligent about twine as it can cost hours of time when it gets caught in machinery.

Best of luck

 

[widefat]

I hear ya. I uncover a pile of refuse every time I turn around - bottles, cans, metal, things that dont decay. Rolls of fence, bedsprings, etc. When I first moved in, I found a 3 bottom plow, disc, and IH FEL covered with briars. Took them to an auction Old buildings that have collapsed. I think it IS just a way of life - it still happens today.

 

[RNeumann]

That sounds an old overgrown scrap pile......one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

 

[CobyRupert]

"Hey! I was going to use that.....someday."

It's like a bookshelf (or more modern DVD, video game library, etc...). They've already been used and they're never going to be used again, and if they haven't they never will, so why do you have them?

I've heard it explained that bookshelves (and junk piles) is man's denial of his mortality.
That it's a denial of one's finite time on this planet. That we want to fool ourselves into believing that "one day" we'll have all that extra (infinite) time to do all those projects we thought of, or time to read that book that interested us a decade ago, or watch that movie again, etc...

...but why throw garbage in the middle a field? Throw it over the bank like everyone else!

 

[widefat]

fool ourselves into believing that "one day" we'll have all that extra (infinite) time to do all those projects we thought of, or time to read that book that interested us a decade ago, or watch that movie again, etc...

...but why throw garbage in the middle a field? Throw it over the bank like everyone else!

or at least a single pile in the middle of the field. Why small piles all over the dang property?

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I know when I was growing up, that was a common solution. Most farmers used their equipment until it was worn out and unfixable and it had to go someplace. It was one thing to take a load of hogs or calves to the stock yards, which may be 50 or 75 miles, and another to load up an old piece of equipment, that had to somehow be manhandled to the bed of a truck and take it to a salvage @ a penny a pound. Besides, old equipment often was a source of parts.

However, most farmers I knew had no problem with burning old tires, binder twine, brush etc., to keep the place looking nice.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Great post. People are #@$%#& lazy is why! When I bought my place, lots of cleanup. Last year additional land. ***** everywhere. Bush hogging lots of noises, one area I'm using a cub cadet zero turn mower, hit barbed wire, T posts, etc.
Had to weld up mower deck, new jack shafts, blades, etc.
The one neighbor who used it for years...tossing his beer cans everywhere. Same guy who threw ***** over fence onto my place...tires, metal, old buckets, tarps, etc. Crap floating down my creek.
Now I have locked gates, No Trespassing signs everywhere.
Yes, I'm the mean (now CLEAN) "stay off my lawn" guy.
Sorry... I'm through fussing now .

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Speaking of barbed wire (Yeah, I know, it's a bit off topic, but timely any way)...Young fellow who I used to work with, was born and raised on a farm in Western Oklahoma. He said they had hired a couple extra hands to help with replacing some fence on his Dad's ranch; one of which was running the tractor and the auger digging the post hole. In digging one of the post holes, the auger picked up a piece of old barbed wire fencing that was hidden in the dirt, and in the process, it wrapped around the auger and somehow wrapped around the ankle of the other man. He was so badly injured that he lost his foot. It's certainly not something I would have anticipated, but it certainly seems possible.

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

"Hey! I was going to use that.....someday."

It's like a bookshelf (or more modern DVD, video game library, etc...). They've already been used and they're never going to be used again, and if they haven't they never will, so why do you have them?

I've heard it explained that bookshelves (and junk piles) is man's denial of his mortality.
That it's a denial of one's finite time on this planet. That we want to fool ourselves into believing that "one day" we'll have all that extra (infinite) time to do all those projects we thought of, or time to read that book that interested us a decade ago, or watch that movie again, etc...

...but why throw garbage in the middle a field? Throw it over the bank like everyone else!

I think you nailed it for some of the stuff I found. The coils of wire rope I found were probably rescued from a discard pile of a logging or rigging company. The fiberglass pipe I am sure had purpose when it was "salvaged" from a construction site, but there were 6 or 7 pieces 8' to 20' long and 3" to 4" in diameter. Maybe for fence posts, I don't know. Some of the wire rope had been here long enough to self bury. I found one coil with a flail mower. I also found two strands of high tensile wire with the flail. The high tensile wire was mostly buried in the sod but came to the surface when the ground dipped. I pulled about 500 feet of each strand out of the ground with the tractor, but they broke underground and didn't appear above ground again.

I think Fuddy 1952 is right about the rest of the crap, they were just to lazy to care where it went or the later consequences.

In another pile I found the remains of about a dozen concrete fence posts, plus sheet metal that I believe was the remains of an old pickup canopy all covered in weeds. The strange thing is this pile was about 20 feet from the house. There are still a few concrete posts in the ground still vertical and a few broken, lying horizontally but with the bases still in the ground. I think we are about 80 percent done with cleaning up the property. It is rewarding in and of itself, but the compliments from locals are a nice bonus.