WHAT A MESS.
I dream of our finished home. I dream of clean, white walls...wooden floors, rows of organized shelves, books and mason jars and trinkets artfully arranged. Everything minimal, simple, and neat.But that dream seems distant sometimes. Especially yesterday, as I looked around our tiny cabin and saw: bags and bags of left over insulation and the plastic it was packaged in, stacks of newly-built bee frames, random scraps of drywall, boxes of tile and grout and adhesive, Jesse's latest fermentation project, plywood boards and flooring pieces, stovepipe and bags of chicken feed....not to mention the literal MOUND of garbage still lying in the yard full of trash from the early days of construction and strange metal pieces we have unearthed from around the property.
Jesse and I produce very little trash, in reality. All of our food scraps go to the compost or to the chickens or to Wendell, and all of our paper or cardboard is burned. We reuse anything that we can. We try not to buy or consume products made or packaged with plastic. But, in the process of building our house, we find ourselves stuck with a ridiculous amount of plastic wrapping and other such junk. It leaves us in a sort of dilemma - living in Bugtussle, where there is no such thing as trash or recycling pickup. And so the garbage piles up, until we decide to drive it to the faraway dump, where we then have to pay for them to bury it in a landfill. There is always the solution that many of our neighbors use, to simply burn it all, plastic and everything, filling the sky with a dark, chemical cloud. Which is worse?Clearly, we don't like either of these choices. So....there is sits. Not decomposing. Making a mess.While I am still working on a solution for our garbage pile, I can find an answer to the clutter. While in my mind our life is simple and organized and white and clean, I have come to realize that it is mostly, actually, messy. Our life is messy - it is overflowing with canning jars and bushel baskets and skeins of yarn and dirty chore boots and books and old wine bottles and all of the little things that fill our days. It is not the cover of a magazine. It will always be a little bit cluttered, a little bit dirty, a little bit real. And when I can embrace this, I know I will be happier. We are farmers, and our life is full of practical, utilitarian things - it will never be truly "minimal" or "streamlined." I think of the Shaker saying - Beauty rests on utility - and in that, I can look at our unorganized cabin floor, and smile.- Hannah.
BYE BYE BAGGY.
Inspired by a generally simpler life (and by our friend Kalie's quest to be Zero Waste at All Things Homespun), Hannah and I have decided to start cutting back on plastic until we no longer have any in our lives. Recycling just seems insufficient, and encourages the further production of more plastic. We have little use for anything that doesn't biodegrade and that we can't turn into food or soil. Plastic, chemicals and fast food are all on that list. As Kalie writes, and what Hannah and I have quickly discovered about this venture, is that it's not easy. It takes a LOT of planning ahead, some sacrifice, and also a little acceptance that certain plastics will simply take time to rid from our lives.Our peat moss, for example, comes in a large block wrapped in plastic. We need peat moss or a similar substance for our soil mix, but we could do without the plastic. There are alternatives we could make or find ourselves, namely leaf mold, but we cannot have them immediately. This fall we will stockpile a giant pile of leaves to start their fungal decomposition, and it will take at least two years for that to break down properly then will have to be renewed every year. We are going to experiment with a few more alternatives such as decomposed tree bark, but until we find a solid option, we will have to continue purchasing that large, necessary block of material in its large, useless piece of plastic. If only this were the only example...We're coming to terms with the fact that a lot of our foods come in plastic bags, also. Our cheese is cryovac-sealed, our milk has a small plastic piece that comes off the lid then presumably goes straight into the ocean, all of our organic greens come in not-so-green bags. The obvious answer to all of this is to simply make our own, grow our own, or shop at the farmer's market––all of which we do, or we're in the process of doing. In the future, we'll have our milk cow, and we'll make our own cheese from her milk. In the (very near) future we'll have our own vegetables, and what we don't have, we'll buy in bulk or have to do without altogether. The less obvious answer to the problem of plastic is setting an example for not only other consumers but companies to stop packaging everything so heavily, because the surprising thing about not using plastic is that plastic is nearly unavoidable. Even checking out at the grocery store plastic-free is a challenge. The cashier will inevitably slip your sack of potatoes into a bag then look at you like you're suffering a stroke when you insist you don't need one. Bags in bags is tangible madness.Anyone else tried a similar change before? Have you any tips? Success stories? Criticisms or guffaws? Encouragement? Hannah and I, along with so many of our friends, want kids one day. To me, improving the environment, eliminating waste, and at least working towards a sustainable lifestyle will help to leave them a cleaner place to play.- Jesse.