Recycling

Recycling on a farm means reusing, and converting everything useful into something helpful. A lot of it revolves around poop. If you raise animals, they make it. If you grow veggies, they need it. Works out rather nicely if you do both.

Veggie scraps go to the animals, animal waste goes to the compost, compost goes to the veggies. You pick up benefits in the middle - good veggies, good eggs and meat. Done right, it won't take much from the outside to keep it running in a perpetual cycle.

You'll find yourself recycling many things, often just out of sheer need. Some of this can be pretty expensive, so finding methods to make-do with what you have becomes second nature. Recycling feed bags for assorted purposes is the stock in trade of farmers. Saving old bailing twine may be going a bit too far now that it is not bio-degradable, but we know people who do.

For the most part, a farm is a microcosm of recycling. In fact, recycling wasn't something created for yuppies who consumed too much soda pop, it was born on the farms, where you just naturally saved things and reused them. If there is a way to make something work a little longer, you do it. If you can use something on hand instead of buying something else to do the job, you do.

Get creative. Recycling animal waste is pretty logical, and doesn't take much creativity. Recycling other things does - but something about composting poop seems to inspire creativity, so we know you'll have moments of brilliance when you have the need for something and only some scraps of used materials laying around.

 

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