Clean Up, Clean Up

Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere!

(i found this entry in the draft files – guess i forgot to post it a year ago. Dallas and i loaded more, but sadly, farm scrap metal is now worth only 3 cents a pound.)

The weather has been very cooperative in allowing machinery to get near ditches and draws for decades old farm scrap removal. So, we’ve taken advantage of that and my husband and son have pitched in and helped me remove trash so that now another 40 acres have been cleared of sharp old metal tin, farm equipment, old metal water tanks, molasses lick tanks, rolls and rolls of brittle woven wire, windmills, milk cans, even a washing machine.

At 7 cents a lb, we hauled enough to pay ourselves $6.40 an hour. That doesn’t include the cost of fuel and machinery use. If the government was serious about cleaning up the environment, it could incentivize recycling by increasing prices for rubbish. However, i don’t want the government to step in and screw up something else.

This is after Dallas and I had cleaned out – by hand! – this ditch by 2/3rds and there is still a lot buried in here. The bigger stuff, we use our tractor and front end loader and sometimes 5 long log chains to reach the big stuff at the bottom of my deep ditches. It’s hard work packing chains and climbing the ditches, but it’s a good feeling to have made my pastures safer for people and livestock and removed such an eyesore. There is much more to do, but it will take the rest of our lives to find the time to clean up all the scrap previous farmers pitch away.