The Green Box
This article is for the elderly who must trudge to the Green Boxes to dump trash since this rural community with its rough terrain of valleys and hills precludes trash pickup as our city brethren have.
Turning 80 I am tired with declining age strength to be hefting heavy and heavier trashcans up to a shoulder height opening in a Green box 7 miles away over a Jeep Trail. Yet this has been my only option unless I resort to the older ways and dump it over the hill on my property, creating a Midden.
60-70,000 years ago middens appeared. Archeologists look for middens outside of caves where out pre-human and human ancestors lived. Digging around in these dumps, usually in front of the cave tells us a great deal about what they ate, how they kept warm with the invention of fire, making stone tools and wrapping themselves with animal skins. Cave Bears-big strapping animals often had to be driven out of caves; perhaps Saber Tooth Tigers still lived therein. Certainly the Wooly Mammoths were in herds along with pre-horses and Camels. Plants and trees were different with the change of flora and fauna as the new Ice Age was approaching. Apparently this is when the Neanderthals faded out, but they did interbreed with humans as National Geographic studies have decreed.
On this 300-year-old white man’s farm there was extensive use of the midden up into the 1980’s. Neighbors still use the concept of a midden, especially when they become old, no longer employed in town, which then afforded an automobile ride to toss a trash bag with ease into a Green Box. Ah, to be a young 60 again!
There is scant, but conclusive evidence that Native American- Indians habituated this farm area. Arrowheads, and stone bone breakers have been found, used to get the marrow out of animal bones of the hunt. I suspect their intrusion was a summer camp at this location for the spring water and game. Perhaps your old farm has a midden, if so, it is probably more modern with tin cans, paper, old tires, auto parts and whatnot.
Today, although you may not have trash pickup, new dudes to this area, in their citified thinking, demand roadside pickup from the county. Their lot is increasing and eventually this issue will be studied, taxed and implemented with the individual trashcans to be left by the roadside. Each trashcan belongs to the county; each and every additional trashcan has a fee. For me that is a 3000 foot back and forth driveway trip with heavy lifting again to our county dirt road. I cannot do this when it snows. Our county supervisors must think out this concept carefully. I would be concerned for other elderly in this fix, especially with winter ice.
To solve this problem of trudging back and forth over Jeep Trail, hauling a “Honey Wagon”, a 2-wheel trailer by a truck, with filled trashcans from the winter household wastes, for one trip in the beginning snow melt of spring to the Green Box, is what I did for years. Unfortunately the Green Box guardians who watch these boxes, hoping to earn their keep with fines and lectures are a pain, harassing and questioning such activity.
Having a sit-down talk with my wife we came to the conclusion that certainly by age 90, I, a combat disabled veteran, will be unable to do the deed, much less drive a truck. So we have devised a new plan and experimented with a factory made INCINERATOR.
We placed 3 trashcans of refinement in the kitchen. (1) Wet vegetable and such scraps, (2) another trashcan for plastics that predominate the purchases in town, (3) and lastly a paper only trash. Guess which one fills up the fastest?
Rural farmers are forever burning brush piles and probably trash. These are open fires and the Forest Rangers cringe with anxiety that their fires will get away from them and cause a forest fire. These activities will be eventually be made illegal.
Our incinerator, A “Burnright Product”, was purchased through Amazon.com. It is a stainless steel vertical/covered, big multi slotted pipelike structure. These 1000, or so, “slots” rotate the air intake, which promotes temperatures above 1500 F. This incinerator is in our 12-acre backyard. The burning area has been first sprayed with Round Up grass killer in a big circle; free from roots and plants with a charged water hose aside.
Following directions I fired it up. WOW! It reduced everything to ash; dry paper products, wet paper products, wet food scraps and such, and there is no rubbish as would be found in the old 55-gallon steel drum drilled with air holes that still does not burn well. The steel drum is an open top fire hazard, wherein the INCINERATOR has a slide in-slide out top, and does not exude flames-just Incineration.
I even cremated a dead cat-just reduced to ash. No sparks either, just some fly ash, which is not combustible. Later this summer I will build a “Fire Pit” which is popular these days. Lowes on their web site offers a demo on construction. I think to concrete in the bottom as the heavy ash is scooped up better than with a soil bottom. With this “pit” I will ensconce the INCINERATOR to favor a back yard décor.
Since my initial burning I am just pleased as all get out, reducing my labors, having only to drop off the light –no weight plastic wrappers, boxes and advertisements, in a black plastic bag at the Green box when we go to town. Plastic is not recommended to incinerate as the resultant “goo” may clog the air slots. Following next winter, the “Honey Wagon” will not be used to go to the Green Box. I can retire it. Who knows, maybe the Green Box guardians will commend me for saving the Landfill.
You may find more information on the Burnright INCINERATORS at this site:
https://burnrightproducts.com/
God Bless The Landfill, God Bless you all, and may you livelong and prosper.
Old Timer
COPYRIGHT: Back2theLand.com, 7-8-2015. All rights reserved.
