In Which We Take Out the Trash

When we lived in Boulder, the boys loved to watch the garbage and recycling trucks come by, with their automated arms that lifted the specially designed 32-gallon trash cans, sullying no human hand. We would dash from window to window at the sound, laughing.

The first time I read about living outside the city limits, I was struck that trash pickup wasn't automatic. What would one do with the wastes?

Today's farm trash day was an all day event. It included

• five black widows, at least four of which are now deceased, but all of which horrified and thrilled us;


• one tiny snake, so small I almost mistook it for a little squiggle of chicken dung, just hanging out under a pallet;


• one mama mouse, whose droppings I noticed in a pile of feed bags, but despite being on my guard was still startled by the very living little brown body; she dashed away as I shook her bag home;


• hours of trash consolidation in the back of the truck;


• shoveling minerals into the bucket of the tractor until a burst of rain, in which Phil had to both quickly dump the minerals in the greenhouse, then rinse the bucket out to avoid corrosion, despite the storm;


• a two or three hour round trip drive to the dump;


• and an enormous bonfire, to burn feed bags and busted pallets.

It was one of the most satisfying days I've had on the farm. We moved the last ten cattle panels away from the driveway, where they'd been stacked since October 2009. For the last two years, the weeds have been growing up inside them, and the wire industrial look has spoiled my view of the orchard as we drive down our driveway. No more. That spot is clean.

Another spot along the driveway had stacked pallets. No more. The worst were burnt, and the best stacked neatly in their proper place.

The final tote from our mineral spreading in fall 2009 we finally emptied, and that ugly white plastic tote has gone to the dump. The spot next to our compost pile is cleared, for the first time in almost two years.

Phil had a spot where he was drying lumber in front of the motor home; as he used the lumber, those pallets became handy stacking for garbage, but that meant that right outside our door always looked trashy (because, literally, it was). No longer. That pile is gone, including the heavy angle iron used to ship the tiller, and the moving blankets we brought from Colorado that have been sitting out in the elements for two years and more. They may have been reusable, once, but I am thankful they no longer are part of my living area decor.

The last of the large black plastic peat moss bags, all seven of them or so, are no longer lying right in the road down to the garden. They didn't fit in the truck for our last dump run, so they have been a minor irritation, uglifying the view of our entire property, for almost half a year. I'm happy they are gone.

And with that, we managed a general clean up. "Why are these pallets over here?" We must have fed animals on the other side of the fence at one point, a year ago. "I'll just move them away now." (And there was the little snake.) "What is this table doing here on the side of the road?" We used that for shooting. "Last Thanksgiving?!" Yup. "I'll just move that back up to the house."

T-posts: stacked. Extension cords: wound up in the neat daisy-chain pattern (clearly, Phil did that).

And the pile of broken wood with rusty nails and empty paper feed bags by the dozen, favorite dwelling places for spiders, beetles (also known by the less pleasant name "roaches"), mice, and others—the piles I was prepared to look around, since they were at least fairly orderly—those piles Phil burned.

The boys absolutely delight in fire. Two had already bathed for church tomorrow, but it was too mean to keep them indoors in clean condition, so they celebrated this day of cleaning house/farm, and we'll bathe them again tomorrow, when we hope to have more motivation. We're pretty happy to just sit and enjoy the sound of rain and thunder.