recycling food waste

Discussion in 'News from around the damp planet' started by songbird, Jan 9, 2015.

  1. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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  2. Bryant RedHawk

    Bryant RedHawk Junior Member

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    Now that is great, at last at least one city is catching on and doing the right thing with garbage.

    On our homestead we have one bin, it gets the items that can't be readily recycled by us or at a recycling plant.

    Aluminum cans go to a friend who turns them in for fishing money (worms, hooks, line, etc.) But I may begin smelting them into ingots when I get my forge set up and running.
    Tin (steel) cans get crushed and taken to the metal recycler for now. eventually I will be smelting these myself for reuse of the metal since I can use it to make knives or barrel straps.
    Plastics get recycled.

    everything else is rotted or put into a new growing mound.
     
  3. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    i think it's not the only city working on this sort of thing, but i like to cheer on any efforts found as i do think it makes a big difference over the long haul. taking a lot of food waste and using it for pig or chicken food or for other composting it can end up as a prime garden/farmland material. real bones (that haven't been steamed and had all the good stuff extracted already) could be ground up and composted to make a very useful material. turn some into bone char and mixed with compost is wonderful. won't get much better than that.
     
  4. Bryant RedHawk

    Bryant RedHawk Junior Member

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    It surely makes a big difference, it also means that more and more people are starting to think of better alternatives to landfills. The county has a good composted mulch program going and yesterday I got to talk to the supervisor in charge of that program, he liked the idea of adding more items to the list of what they put into making the mulch. They are in the process of starting up a separation program for county trash pickup where they will have "wet" and "dry" pickups plus one that is for items that can't be composted into mulch. County residents can go pickup this mulch for free and there is so much of it, you can get all you want or can haul.

    When I build a growing mound, I do so in layers to keep air space to the minimum and so have less settling. Lots of stuff gets used including; all bones from meals, left overs that don't go to the chooks, goats or rabbits, shredded paper/cardboard, leaves, roots that were pulled up and dried out, just about anything that will rot goes in to the mound to fill in around the wood.
    The last one I built, this summer, has only settled 2 inches so far from all the winter rains we've had.
     
  5. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    i'm surprised goats won't take care of leftover bones. it seems they are so good at dealing with about anything else. : ) but probably a hazard to them in some fashion as they are herbivores... for a larger family or group that eats animals i think a bone grinder is well worth the effort to set up. i suppose for many that is what the pig or dogs are for...

    also, if you have trees that could use protection from grazing animals a concoction made from heated bones is said to be pretty effecitive. i first heard of it in Sepp Holzers books.
     
  6. Bryant RedHawk

    Bryant RedHawk Junior Member

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    good information Songbird, thank you. I have not acquired the Guinea Hogs so far but when I do, they will get any bones. The chickens like ground up bones, I so far have not given any to the goats. I don't like the thought of giving any animal parts of their own kind (that's how the mad cow disease got started) so I keep things separated and labeled so I don't mess up. So far the trees have been left alone since the fruit trees are fenced away from all but the dogs.
     
  7. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    the bit about the goats was a joke for sure. i'd not want them to have bones either... : )
     
  8. Benjy136

    Benjy136 Junior Member

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    Speaking of Goats, I had one Billy back in Arkansas. I had started a small engine repair shop for the locals and had to wait a few weeks for a special tune-up kit (Plug, points and condenser). While I was tearing down the engine I had the new parts on a workbench beside me. Yep. That crunching sound that caught my attention was the condenser (mostly aluminum) being chewed so nonchalantly without so much as a "May I?" or "Thank you" by T'Neg, the goat. The Matter-of-fact, not-bad expression on his face was priceless, and even in my state of exasperation and anger, I couldn't help finding it hilariously funny.

    That lightened up our day just remembering the look on that goat's face while he chomped happily away. Of course I had to get it away from him, though it made me wonder what other stuff he had ingested that would have put most animals on life support.

    Love is the answer

    Uncle Ben
     

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