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12:58 pm
February 8, 2009
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So…in order to cut corners on our budget, we got rid of our dumpster out here on our 5 acres. It was costing us around $35-40/mo.
I'm wondering how you deal with garbage on your acreage We will be burning, but my husband doesn't want the tin cans or glass put in the fire. So we'll be recycling the tin and glass in town.
We live where the winters get pretty harsh, so our burn pile will need to be convenient to get to in the winter, but I don't want it an eye sore either. Safety is an issue too. My husband will be getting a barrel to burn in with some sort of mesh to set over the top while it's burning.
I'm just curious how other's do it….any advice, experience, "don't do this", "this was a great idea"….type of things.
Thanks! 
1:03 pm
September 2, 2008
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What an interesting topic, we use the local garbage service because of local fire laws and restrictions.
1:06 pm
February 8, 2009
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We don't have any restrictions or laws against it, currently. Once in a while if it's really dry, there'll be a burning ban temporarily but you can still use your burning barrel as long as it has some type of mesh over the top.
6:11 pm
February 10, 2009
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Well, we have trash service now, but you're right, it is tempting to stop it to save money. For years, we didn't have any way to even get trash service way out where I live, so we burned the paper stuff, had chickens and a compost pile for the things that are edible or compost-able, our family hauled stuff to the back of some woods where a lot of people created a sort of private land fill. We all washed and squashed our tin cans, and washed out all jars and anything that had food residue in it so raccoons and such would be less attracted to it. It was pretty illegal I'm sure, or at least irresponsible… I suppose saying 'everyone did it' isn't a good answer!!
Now, we have a recycling truck come by every other week, so that takes care of all cans (and I still wash them since I grew up doing so!), newspaper, bottles/jars, and almost all plastic. I still have chickens and a compost heap so really, we wouldn't have all that much to burn… now you have me thinking! I hate burning it though… we really don't fill our garbage bin, unless there's some project going on or some reason for extra stuff, I wonder if a neighbor would share so we could split the bill?
3:33 pm
February 8, 2009
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I just lost an entire post….just suddenly disappeared!!!
So to START OVER AGAIN!!!
This is what we have come up with so far with our garbage:
Glass: rinsed and put into 8 gallon bucket (with holes drilled in bottom to prevent standing water). Once full, will be taken in to town to recycling center.
Tin cans and such: rinsed and also put into 8 gallon bucket (with holes), once full will be taken to my hubby's scrap metal pile. (once he gets enough processed metals he takes it to local scrap yard and get paid for it). These buckets will be outside by our back kitchen door in an out-of-the-way place.
Food (not meat/dairy/bones): will be put into a kitchen compost system of some sort. Will need to figure something out that isn't an eye-sore and doesn't take up a lot of kitchen space as I have a very small kitchen. Then this will be taken out to a compost pile periodically.
Plastic: Realistically, some of this will get burned. But I will need to have a larger container outside for plastic and this too will get taken to town to recycling center.
Not sure what to do with meat/dairy/bones that needs to be thrown away. Any ideas on that?
Paper/cardboard: Some will be saved to be used with our woodburning furnace in the winter. Some will be burned I'm sure.
4:12 pm
December 28, 2008
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Have heard of digging a trench (or a really big hole) for the incompostables. Deep enough that animals would not be inclined to dig it up. You leave the dirt beside the trench, dump in whatever you have, then cover it immediately from the heap of dirt beside the trench. (Like you might just leave a rake there for the purpose.)
We have a smallish what I call my "kitchen compost bin" beside the back deck. It is a black, square plastic binwith a large lid (theoretically, you remove compost from the bottom, but I haven't tried that yet!) that is pretty handy all year around. I keep one of my weeding buckets beside the back door to collect kitchen compostables, stray leaves from houseplant trimmings and whatever is growing in and around the porch. This bucket is dumped into the "kitchen compost bin" as is needed, determined by what is in it.
We have racoons and 'possoms both in residence fairly close to the house, but the only time they come up on the porch is when we forget to put the cover back on the bin, or forget to dump the bucket.
We do have garbage pick up where we are, but frequently don't have anything to contribute. We also don't have a great place to dig a trench, although we do have a burn barrel, and recycle what we can, which really isn't much since we have very few cans, jars, and paper that we don't reuse.
Yes, a spark arrester on top of the burn barrel is absolutely necessary for safety. It doesn't have to be fancy – a sheet of hardware cloth usually is good enough. Maybe bend the corners over a bit to sort of make it fit. 
9:59 pm
August 24, 2010
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You can compost bones from cooked meats as well as raw (from processing your own meats). Bone takes longer to decompose, so should be cut into small-ish pieces, ground if you have a way to grind it.
I looked through a couple of books looking for info, and can't find it right now (but will look tomorrow) I know one reference I have says that it is recommended that bones be composted in wood shavings – but another says grass clippings work well. [This confuses me, one is brown, one is green, so I'm not sure which is really better.]
You can also compost meat this way, it too should be cut into small pieces, and the fat removed as well as possible.
Maybe a seperate compost bin for meat and bones? Once composted it could be added to your regular compost pile or bin.
12:09 am
January 17, 2011
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I have a compost crock that sits on my kitchen counter. Veggie scraps, fruit scraps/peels, coffee grounds & filter, tea bags, used paper towels (no grease) goes into it. You can compost newspapers (NOT slick or shiney) and also cardboard or use them in your veggie garden or flower beds as weed suppressors….just cover w/mulch.
To keep from having to clean the compost crock all the time, I reuse the produce bags from the grocery in it & then they get pitched when we dump it into the compost barrel.
We have trash pickup here. County passed an ordinance that if you don't sign up & pay, they will put a lien against your property! And if renters don't pay, the property owner is liable.
But we could probably go 3 weeks without pickup…we try to reuse everything we can in some fashion or other. Or like someone else…DH takes it to the scrap yard for $$$$!
9:10 pm
February 22, 2010
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When my folks first moved to town (after over 50 years in the country) Mom refused to pay for trash service. So, Dad would burn papers and bury the garbage in the back yard. Mom would freeze the garbage that might get smelly (you had to be careful what you laid out to thaw for supper) most of the week and then at the end of the week Dad would bury it.
Imagine Dad's surprise when he got ready to start mowing his yard the last of April…potato plants all over his back yard! He let them continue to grow…best potatoes he ever grew!
9:02 am
February 6, 2011
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We burn what we can, take the cans, etc to work with my husband once a month, and compost the rest. We just have a big pile out back that we dump out kitchen scraps onto, as well as our leaves, weeds, grass, dirt, chicken coop hay, etc. It gets turned periodically and moved to a further location when it gets too big. Then we have the most wonderful compost for our gardens. I'm sure I'll hear how wrong I am, but we throw everything from the kitchen in there- including the meats, bones, fats, etc. The animals take what they want 
and leave the rest to break down. Of course, some of the kitchen scraps make their way to the chickens first. 
9:28 am
December 28, 2008
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Exactly how you do the disposal of meat/fat items depends entirely upon where you are. It would never work here because we have everything from bears to coyotes in the woods surrounding our house – neither of which (and so much more!) we want to encourage to venture any closer than they already have. That is not to say that in other places dumping everything in a single pile isn't just fine! (I just wish that we could… )
10:04 am
November 9, 2010
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I just recently cut off our trash service, it got to be 110 every 3 months! Too much for me. What I do is recycle everything that I can, we don't have a service but where I take my trash to (the dump) has a center there that will take everything except for glass. I reuse some of the glass but most of it when I have a big enough load to take, I take it to the other recycling place on the other side of town. I compost everything that I can, now I live in a house hold of 4 and I do this…the rest of them it all just gets put in the trash.
If you can tell me how to teach a grown man and 2 kids to recycle I would love to know that? Or a system that y'all use for that!
10:25 am
August 6, 2010
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I recycle everything I can–I have bins in the garage to collect that stuff. Food waste goes to the chickens. I have an old enameled bowl that sits on the counter an I line it with newspaper. Everything goes in there–meat, greasy paper towels, bits of stray paper, unidentified stuff from the back of the fridge. I dump it into the chicken pen every couple of days. The girls eat what they want, and scratch the rest into great compost.
Every couple of months, I drive to the dump with bags that contain mostly unrecycleable plastics and metal, the 'diapers' that line the bottom of meat trays, an occasional real diaper from the grandbaby. Costs a dollar a bag–if I have been tidying up the garage or cellar, I might have 4 or 5 of them.
I used to have a trash service come to the house–it was $20 a month when I first moved here, but I think it has gone up since then. Much cheaper to haul stuff to the dump.
9:10 am
November 20, 2009
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Trash people do not collect here. We have three trash cans in the cellar bottom (outside) for glass, metal cans and plastic. When they get full we drop them off in town at the re-cycling center, I do rinse everything. I keep two lidded gallon buckets in the kitchen one is for scraps the dogs or chickens will eat and the other is for the compost pile. I always cook all bones or meat scraps, the scraps go to the animals the bones go into the freezer and go to the dump when we have to make a trip. I cannot dispose of bones here or my dogs, raccoons or whatever will dig them up. Items that can be of use to others go the the Salvation Army. What is left goes into 3 other trash cans one in the work shop and two outside. These go to the Municipal dump about every three or four months, the fee is usually only about twelve dollars as you pay by the pound. We try very hard (use our own bags at the grocery store etc) not to collect a lot of garbage so the political flyers and junk mail infuriate me. One thing I wonder if anyone has a solution for, how do you dispose of used cooking oil?
9:19 am
October 18, 2010
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Could you just dig a hole and bury it in the woods somewhere away from the house? That's what we used to do. Now I just put it in a used container (can, plastic jar, etc.) and put it in the trash.
We have trash collection every week here and recycle collection twice a month…very handy. I try to put out out only one bag of trash, but we can't have a burn barrel here so sometimes that's hard to do. We can recycle lots of things though. And I use my newspapers and cardboard for "lasagna gardening" layers.
Some towns and cities in our state are going to "pay as you throw" trash collection, you buy the bags and use them as you need to. I think it will help toward more recycling. But it's not here yet.
5:20 am
January 10, 2010
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In the UK there has been a recent shift by a lot of motorists to use 'bio oil' in their diesel motors (NOT petrol engines). There is a way of filtering used oil and adding something to it to make it safe to use in vehicles….now what this is exactly I don't know, but the information will be in the net – probably loads of it! We would still have to pay a small amount of tax to the government to use it but nothing like as much as at the fuel pumps! (I know my cousin uses it in a couple of his vehicles)
Just found this link, there are MANY others!
9:03 am
February 6, 2011
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Joyce said:
One thing I wonder if anyone has a solution for, how do you dispose of used cooking oil?
I just toss it on the gravel driveway. It helps cut dust and the dog eats up any tiny scraps. I usually pick an out-of-our-walkway area so it has time to soak in before we walk over it. I have also been known to dump it in the cornfield. We are so blessed to have so much space here away from the house to compost, etc.
As for recycling, my husband built me a center kitchen island. One side is open as a breakfast bar. The other side is enclosed with doors. Inside we have three garbage cans- pop cans, burnable trash, non-burnable cans, foil, etc. Our kids have pretty much grown up with it, so it is normal to them. However, we have family that farms our land and find many times that they have cleaned out their trucks into our burn barrel. It fills up so quickly when people put in cans, glass, and other stuff that doesn't burn! The frustrating thing is that they lived on a farm for most of their lives and know about what burns and what doesn't. 
I just don't understand some people's lack of respect for others' property.
12:22 am
May 8, 2011
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We have a dumpster but burn things that we don't want to have filling the dumpster up. Like alot of people with room to spare here we also have junk piles on the "back 40". Old machinery, wood, metal, yada yada
7:46 am
November 8, 2008
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In West Virginia, it is illegal to burn trash or to dump garbage on your property. We have trash pick-up and every household is required by law to subscribe to a trash service. If a policeman or a conservation officer shows up and asks to see your "garbage service receipts" and you don't have them, then you can be arrested.
I do know this for SURE because DH is a lawyer.
That said, we do have a recycling center in almost every county. We recycle everything that we can by rinsing and sorting into plastic bags: glass, veggie cans, aluminum, plastic jugs/bottles without the tops. Also, newspaper and cardboard. We store everything under a shed and then about once a month, hubby loads it in the truck and takes to the RC. (We like to recycle due to environmental positives. But, recycling in not required and there is no recycling pick-up service except in some of the larger cities.) We compost or serve food scraps to dogs.
Our trash service will take 6 big bags of garbage per week but we usually only have (1) one.
We can burn yard waste such as brush piles but there are rules about this. Area around the pile must be cleared of combustibles for at least 6 feet (I think), extinguisher must be handy (water hose, actual extinguisher, etc.) and burning must start after 4:00 PM and be extinguished by dawn. In fire season, there are occasionally burning bans posted due to the dryness of the surrounding forest. Since West Virginia is 80% forest, we have to take forest/brush fires very seriously here.
7:49 am
November 8, 2008
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Joyce said:
Trash people do not collect here. We have three trash cans in the cellar bottom (outside) for glass, metal cans and plastic. When they get full we drop them off in town at the re-cycling center, I do rinse everything. I keep two lidded gallon buckets in the kitchen one is for scraps the dogs or chickens will eat and the other is for the compost pile. I always cook all bones or meat scraps, the scraps go to the animals the bones go into the freezer and go to the dump when we have to make a trip. I cannot dispose of bones here or my dogs, raccoons or whatever will dig them up. Items that can be of use to others go the the Salvation Army. What is left goes into 3 other trash cans one in the work shop and two outside. These go to the Municipal dump about every three or four months, the fee is usually only about twelve dollars as you pay by the pound. We try very hard (use our own bags at the grocery store etc) not to collect a lot of garbage so the political flyers and junk mail infuriate me. One thing I wonder if anyone has a solution for, how do you dispose of used cooking oil?
Joyce, be sure you save your dump receipts since you don't have pick-up in your area. This is proof of your compliance with the law.
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