City Bumpkin - Burning Trash

We don't burn trash here at the Root Ranch (what my husband affectionately calls our house).  We live just outside the city limits & have city trash pick-up.  But on a real farm you have to burn your trash.  Since I grew up in a small town a few miles from our farm we didn't actually burn our trash either, but all farm trash was burned so I learned the ins & outs from my grandparents & just being out there in general.  Compost everything that can be composted.  Food scraps that can't be composted can usually be fed to the dogs (but we didn't just throw them out b/c that would attract wild animals that we didn't really want around).  Recycle anything that can't be burned - plastic for instance.  Recycling was a big deal.  We collected it in big trash cans (sorted, of course) in the garage and when they were full my grandparents would drive them in to town 30 miles away to the recycling center.  Everything else was pretty much burned in trash cans out by the barn.  Of course, the amount to burn was limited, also.  We re-used everything!  When my dad retired & decided to sell the farm, we went through my grandma's house so she could move in to town.  We found boxes of rubber bands, twisty ties, etc.  She always had whatever you needed and it saved on the amount of trash to be burned.

It's amazing how much of this has stuck with me today!  Yesterday I mentioned to my husband that his dad liked it when I wrote out what the boys should eat when they go visit.  I thought I could laminate a sheet and use a wet-erase marker to fill it in.  He looked at me kinda weird & said, it's only a piece of paper!  Yeah, but it's one more piece of paper to have to burn every week!  What?  We don't burn our trash.  I know, I know, but .... old habits die hard, I guess.  And you know what?  Today they call it 'being green!"