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

[Industrial Toys]

People just have differing belief systems. Doesn't make them good or bad, just different and one can easily piss off another.

It always annoyed me when city people came up here and thought, "country" means "junky". But, again, that's just me.

Cleaning up around here, since 1967, I was always amazed at how much old iron and bits of farm machinery there was about. I thought that stuff was precious, and had to be made by hand. I recycle every nail and wood screw and they just left huge pieces of farm machinery on the fence rows. I don't get it.

And just a disclaimer. My property is clean and neat. My workshops and outbuildings are usually, a DISASTER inside!

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Back when China was building the 3 gorges dam, scrap iron was paying pretty well. This is a logging area, and there was lots of broken down iron in the woods. Guys made a pretty good living mining iron with a low boy and a Cat loader. I hauled off a couple tons of scrap iron that I really wish I had back now.

If you have usable scrap, you can get the rust off of it by soaking it in cheap vinegar for a week. The acetic acid will dissolve the rust and leave the iron untouched. It's particularly good for old tools, logging chains, etc. Be ready to hose it off where black sludge won't matter. Muriatic acid works faster than vinegar, if you are in a hurry.

I was horrified by the guy shooting bottles. Once you shatter glass, you will never get rid of it.

 

[Industrial Toys]

And the animals. I care about them the most. Broken porcelan is like a razor. These critters don't have an ER to go to!

 

[goeduck]

Re: Trashing The Planet

You have to remember that at one time, there were no dumps, dumpsters or even pickup trucks. I live in an area where there are houses and farms from the Civil War era. The only place to put stuff was somewhere on your property. That was the way of life. Out of sight and out of mind. Not that it's right, but there was little choice back a hundred or more years ago.

On the other hand:

Very true ^^^. It was different back some time ago. I recall growing up that we dumped in a small ravine. Not all over the place, just one location on the property. Later public dumps opened. Recycling and scrap was not in anyones vocabulary.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Tree huggers and Organic Gardeners actually seem to be the junkiest of people I find. Tarps, plastic and tents, blue barrels, wagons and piles of different stuff. Repurposed, junky looking things lying around. Pallets, you need some of those! I suppose that kind of operation is hard to keep tidy and worthy of a Home and Gardens spread.

 

[Jstpssng]

That reads like a list of the stuff my town dump won't take.

In summer we have a chemical cleanup, one Saturday every month you can bring stuff in, no questions asked. This summer we will be turning in a lot of old paint as well as a few drums of liquid fertilizer which my father mixed but never used... I asked the Cooperative Extension about using it on my ground but it's been in the greenhouse for several years and they said there's no way of telling what it's like.

And the animals. I care about them the most. Broken porcelan is like a razor. These critters don't have an ER to go to!

That's why I hate barbed wire; it causes nasty wounds, and keeps working for generations after it's served it's purpose.

 

[Industrial Toys]

We have barbed wire here, no longer serving any purpose, now imbedded in trees, tight as a guitar string, we have been "meaning" to cut off. No sense in bambi getting injured.

 

[Jstpssng]

The orchard I worked in had 2 tiers of page fence topped with barbed wire, which was laid around the time of WWI. The page wire has long since rotted away, yet there are still places with strands of barbed wire grown into the trees, 8 feet above the ground. Except where it's sagging or when there's 3 feet of snow on the ground; then it's about neck level.

 

[Alan W.]

We have a landfill in our county that allows locals to take 2 or 3 bags a week for free. Doesnt matter they still throw it out wherever they can.
Lady that bought my great uncles place is a big city girl from the northeast, according to her. You cant see the ground for the dog and cat food cans at her place. I use to think it was a local mentallity but she has proven that wrong.

 

[Fuddy1952]

I had some friends who bought a small farm for their horses. In the middle of the pasture was a deep, long ditch full of trash. They set about to lean it out. They pulled out a couple of trash bags and found the filled with old movie film and even an old projector. So they cleaned it all up and sat down to see what they had and discovered about 20 years of homemade ****. They even recognized some of the neighbors minus 30 years. There were dozens of tapes from the thirties and forties. hey ended up donating it to the National Museum of Pornography in D.C.

I can't stop laughing!