Your land may have a landfill on it. This is a homesteading reality if you are looking at rural land. In this brief (hopefully) post I'll touch on some thoughts about poverty and trash and why they are connected and why many old homesteads have trash piles on them. Let me know in the comments if you have had or are dealing with trash piles!
THE BONEYARD
When we bought our previous homestead (we still own it but I let my parents live there in their retirement) we noticed that there was a sizable trash pile on it. This isn't uncommon unfortunately. Here's a few pictures of what I called "The Boneyard. The boneyard covered probably 2500 square feet and was mounded up in one area (where they had their burn pile) and spread all over. It consisted of every imaginable thing."
...even the kitchen sink... and the bathroom sink and the refrigerator door. No big deal. Scrap metals are something I can handle having grown up (literally) in a junkyard. My dad was a recycler so I saw this as potential money. The BAD stuff was just under the surface of this.
Stuff like vinyl, plastics, cloth, rocks, trashbags, styrofoam...
*And old paint cans, broken porcelain and glass, fencing, car parts and don't forget all the blackberry prickers growing up through it all.
But the vast number of bones led me to believe that someone in the past had quite a butchering operation going on. Well, that or a there was some ritualistic cult here... :) But I found pig skulls, cow bones, deer... some I couldn't identify and whenever I dealt with cleaning bones up I hoped none were human!
WHY ARE THERE TRASH PILES IN THE COUNTRY?
Without going TOO deeply into it, trash pick-up really started as a city thing. Everyone used to throw their trash and even their human waste into the streets, it was sort of normal... until disease hit. Then they would round it up... first it started with manure from horses... and people running pickup services, to trash and waste pickup. Typically they'd just take it out to the country and dump it somewhere. That was fine and well as most things were organic and would waste back into the earth, but as man developed more packaging and compounds and chemicals the stuff wouldn't burn as easily or decompose as readily.
Rural people have always just thrown the stuff into piles. It was common for farms to have dumps. In fact county dumps were typically just that. Some land that the owner charged people to dump stuff on. Even if it were drums of chemicals. Some of those are SuperFund sites now.
But rural folk... they didn't want to pay for what they could do on their own land. Truthfully, they probably couldn't afford to. There is a great connection between trash and poverty... and poverty and rural.
Of course the more man-made compounds and chemicals that we developed and the advent of the petroleum age a lot of those dumps grew and got bigger and more toxic. Many times they would just dig a hole and bury it.
So some of the "pristine country land" may not be so pristine. It's nothing to panic over, but it IS worth looking for the signs when you are looking for land in the country.
Have any of you had a trash pile on your land? Tell me about it. Any pictures? What did you do or what are your plans.
Honestly, I'm STILL cleaning up (slowly have recycled most of the metal and been bagging up other stuff and then burning what I can burn) the Boneyard, which is complicated since I don't live there now. How about you?
GROW WHERE YOU ARE
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There is definitely a connection between poverty and these junk piles. I think some of it is just lazyness too.
I don't think our land has any dumps on it. As far as I know no one lived on it, it was split from a larger property. We're not living out there yet though so I may just have missed it.
I think we do have a small one on our property. It’s in the front unused small corner portion of our property. I only found it a couple weeks ago! Haha not sure what’s all there! I’m sure we will have to (or should) take care of it at some point!
My land wasn't occupied or farmed as far as I can tell until the 1989. It was clear cut probably a few times. It's too hilly and sandy to farm, but I'm assuming it was all maple oak and beech, clear cut, turned into a sandy dune once the soil all eroded and then finally replanted with Pine in the great depression and the more wet portions naturally turned into oak.
Wow, that was a quick history rant. Anyways, the family who originally had a house built here in the late 80s apparently were too cheap or lazy to deal with their trash properly, and they burned it in barrels. I also found a 10 x 10 area that they burned some furniture. I dug up remains of springs and melted foam from it. Fortunately it wasn't too large or deep and I threw the soil I dug up on my driveway never to poison my growing area again.
Farmer's dumps are a great tradition over here on Oz. When we moved to our place, whenever we dug we found garbage bags full of used disposable nappies! Yuck!
I think we do have a small one on our property. It’s in the front unused small corner portion of our property. I only found it a couple weeks ago! Haha not sure what’s all there! I’m sure we will have to (or should) take care of it at some point!
Yes, it's a regular part of old homesteads unfortunately.
We have been cleaning up for the past 6 years on our homestead and every year still find more garbage and scrap metal from the past owners. Every year it is less though our scrap run was only about 500lbs last year. I metal detect on the property and have been finding a lot that way. The first year we recycled about 10 tons of steel from the farm so its getting much cleaner around here.
That's cool that you've got that metric to track it... less and less.
As an aside, I want to purchase a metal detector to use around here.
Yep. We've found some weird stuff! Every piece of land we've bought has had some kind of junk pile we've had to clean up. With us having a lot of cattle they can get foot rot from some random piece of metal cut.
Yeah, I'll post some of the stuff we found in the junk pile on another post. Some of it I kept... It will probably go into a junk pile somewhere when I die... LOL!
This actually makes alot of sense and i actually think that poverty takes one of the biggest toll on the environment.
I actually wanted to write more about the connection to poverty and trash, but figured it was getting too long for the average Steemian's attention span! :) Maybe I'll make another post about the connection.
Please do, my father is a hoarder and i think that poverty played a pivitol roll in creating that environment i grew up in. My trailer and property were a landfill in their own rights. We had tonnes of stuff but nothing of value. We had no money, but he always managed to bring more garbage home. I feel like the more secluded we are, the more stuff we need. When poverty comes into play, the things like diet, lifestyle and ability to acquire and use knowledge are all substantially limited and that scares me. Because poverty is getting harder and harder to overcome. I work my butt off and still havent even scratched the surface of my potential due to the fact 80% of my mind goes towards chasing pavement. Also steemit is for intellectuals, if the average users arent intellectuals then you should be writirng for the unusuals :)
:) I'd challenge the statement that steemit is for intellectuals... LOL. In fact, I was actually just sitting here thinking that although I get a few thoughtful comments and interaction that I think most folks just vote and move on. I'll definitely write (had to go back and fix my spelling on the last post) more in the future about it. Thanks for the comments!
Yea but honestly when the platform start having too many real good bloggers then content like this will be looked up to. Full blogs with real thought. I dont see dmania and other quick blog apps surviving long term. There will be too much competition from real bloggers for those likes and resteems. Bandwidth also plays a huge roll. It will change and we will get smt to help guide our platform in the right direction. I truly believe @ned and the team have a vision for that to be the case. Otherwise steemit will die and engulf itself.
SMT - had to go look it up. Smart Media Tokens. Can you give me your synopsis on how you think that will help guys like me and you? @mikehamm may want to check this out too.
Well from what i’ve discerned its going to help steemit evolve from simply its main page it will allow for icos to be hedged with tokens and open up a fiat gateway to steemit so that global adoption is possible. No more waiting 2 weeks for an account. Algorithms will be in play so that kyc can happen to fast track account creation and incentivize real bloggers to actually participate here. It will take away the benefit of being a lazy money grabber. Leadig to a flourishing community of intelligence and learning. Community. Here is an excellent breakdown i read from a couple months ago! Super well put together. Explains the benefits. https://steemit.com/smt/@slavix/hidden-gems-of-the-smart-media-tokens-white-paper
My parents' land has an old trash pile. I have spent a few afternoons digging out awesome glass jars and bottles for my collection. However...the broken glass and other dangers weren't fun. There was even a roll of carpet out there.
I'm glad you are able to recycle a lot of what you find. That's great!
Thanks for sharing!
Carpet is the worst! At my new homestead (been here a little over year) I found a spot where they rolled out some carpet and it's so grown over now, that I'm not sure if it's worth pulling out because it will leave a big patch of ripped up earth.