When you live in a rural area, you burn things. It's just a fact. Our friendly neighbourhood landfill is open one day a week for your convenience and you still have to pay to use it even though we pay taxes. If we want to put out garbage bags (every two weeks in clear plastic bags only) we must affix a sticker for our municipality which costs us $2.00 a bag. Which we do. We don't burn our garbage. We also get recycling pick up every two weeks as well.
I have a compost container which takes almost all leftover food items as well as perennial clippings, etc. I do not put badly behaved weeds in my compost because they survive there quite nicely. As well, husband is a do it yourselfer and accumulates a lot of scrap.
We have a burn barrel. It is a nice tall barrel with holes cut out of the bottom for good air flow. It is sitting on four big cement pavers. The pavers sit on sand. Today I spent a couple of hours burning. I literally stand close by, garden hose at the ready, large bucket filled with water. We had a burn ban in our municipality for quite a while, but with recent rains the ban has been lifted. Still, I am a cautious burner. Dried plant material, cuttings from trees, scrap old chipboard from chicken coop renovation, etc. burn really well, but I don't ever want to be responsible for setting something on fire that shouldn't be. I am especially cautious due to the death of three people in our local area in a house fire. We are not California or other parts of Ontario, who are of course, currently dealing with terrible fires. But I still am diligent.
We have so many cut limbs /branches from trees that we have trimmed or have had to cut down part of due to the fact that Manitoba maples are like weeds that tend to bend over and break off that a burn of all of those would be insane. Instead we are planning to rent ($$$) a wood chipper and make mulch which I will use in all of my perennial beds. The humungous pile of branches and limbs reminds me of a scene I read about in Pet Semetery (Stephen King) and yes, that is how it is spelled for the book. Anyone remember reading about the deadfall in that book? (Teenage years of reading Stephen King).
What about the rest of you? Any burn barrel or wood chipper people out there?
We don't have a burn barrel, though hubby would probably like to. I'm really bothered by smoke, and tend to have weird skin reactions if much plant matter is burned around me, so burning isn't really an option for us. Our trash and recycling pickup is much cheaper than yours, though. I'm very new to composting, and didn't know that about weeds surviving. Very good to know!
ReplyDeleteI wish we had a wood chipper. Would love the mulch for the garden. No burning here from April till October/November.
ReplyDeleteWe recycle and compost but still seem to have a helluva lot of rubbish for two people .
we can't use our burn barrel/incinerator here, being in a village.
ReplyDeleteWe have recycling collections ( glass,metal,plastic,paper) every week ane green waste every 4 weeks. Landfill is every 3 weeks on a different day.
We don't use the food waste recycling collection as we only have compostable waste.
I'd be loth to chip wood..I'd see it as firewood or for a woodworker
We burn some things, but our garbage and recycling is pretty cheap so a lot goes in the trash.
ReplyDeleteIn our township, we are allowed to burn if we have over 10 acres. If someone wants to burn with less acreage, they are allowed to unless the neighbors complain. I have a large compost pile made out of wood pallets, and we also have trash/recycle collection every week, which we share with my parents who live next door. It's amazing how much trash we can accumulate so quickly!
ReplyDeleteMy folks lived in the country pretty much always and always had a aburn barrel.
ReplyDeleteIncreasingly, we are prohibited from burning stuff in the country. I miss the Autumn bonfire smells.
ReplyDeleteJenn, the way you described your burn barrel...that is the proper way ..if you burning things. But our neighbor lady burns everything, plastics, wood, weeds...you name it . I have been so angry at times too. when the weather is sweet and we could open our windows she will burn something. I am sorry but I hate that smell, so I never want it in my home. I have seen her burn while her laundry is on the line. WTH. I do understand burning yard scraps. And you are doing it the right way...thank you !! I know your neighbors appreciate you. While some people are just plain thoughtless. LOL Blessings, xoxo, Susie
ReplyDeleteNo burning in the city as far as I am aware. I compost some garden refuse and all kitchen scraps (not meat obviously, green bin for that) and it makes a lovely mulch which I use to protect tender plants from winter freezing. Everything else is picked up on alternate weeks but some weeks I don't put anything out!
ReplyDeleteWe are so fortunate where we live. We have garbage pickup every two weeks and a HUGE recycling bin that I could get right inside of and live. We also get weekly green bin pickup of anything from food scraps (leftovers, steak bones) and yard waste. That bin comes up to my chest and every week it is almost overflowing with yard waste we can’t put in our yard compost. If we were not able to do this we would have to burn.
ReplyDeleteThanks, interesting responses. I would love if we had a green bin pickup for extra garden waste. I always seem to have a few huge piles that take forever to get rid of.
ReplyDeleteThe best system I have ever been part of was when I lived in Holland. Every bit was re-used, recycled and picked up. We are almost always under a burn ban, it seems. It used to be just in the middle of summer, but now it starts in May. This does not keep local idiots from setting great piles of stuff on fire - which then spreads and causes havoc.
ReplyDeleteYes, we burn anything that we can, paper, cardboard, tree limbs, brush etc. etc. Not garbage though, that goes in the dumpster. We live in the middle of nowhere, I have a burn thingy made from rocks for the smaller stuff and the big stuff like tree branches we just pile up and burn. We trim our trees on the driveway and as many others that we can so we can mow around them easily. If the branches are thick enough we cut them up to burn in the woodstove in the house.
ReplyDeleteLiving in suburbia my whole life...no. Foreign concept to me. Like snow scrappers. LOL
ReplyDeleteIn the mountains here, due to the severe drought of many years, we are prohibited from even having a campfire or an open BBQ pit for a lot of the summers. Including this one. In the mountains, they do let you burn slash in the winter if you are in an open space with at least four inches of snow on the ground. We have always trucked our slash and debris out to one of many sites where the Volunteer Fire Department collects it, mulches it, and sells it. We have to pay $20 a truckload for that privilege. Ouch!
ReplyDeleteWe have a fire pit that we use for burning, usually branches that have fallen. My husband is constantly monitoring the wind direction, so that he can burn without sending smoke towards the neighbours.
ReplyDeleteMonitoring wind direction is a very sweet, thoughtful thing to do. Wish all neighbors did that! :)
DeleteBlessings, Net
https://itsawonderfulmovie.blogspot.com
We live in a rural area, as well, where we can burn our trash - as you do. We've always done it ourselves, as long as I can remember, and we recycle our metal. I'm sorry to hear your weather has been so dry. I know that's not easy as we've been through that. Thankfully, your burn ban has been lifted, but I don't blame you one bit for being cautious. It's always good to hose down the area, a bit, surrounding the barrel before you start. When large ashes start to fly away I get concerned on where they might land. I wish everyone practiced your cautious behavior.
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Net
https://itsawonderfulmovie.blogspot.com
I don't remember the deadfall but I remember much of that book - it creeped me out completely, and I was a HUGE Stephen King fan!!!! A lot of people have burning barrels up here, too, but not on the mountain top - I don't think it's allowed up here. In my old house I had one, as does my mom. All paper and cardboard got burned, and garbage went out for pickup, which we paid for. Up on the mountain we can't put out bins because of the bears, so the garbage is in the garage until my daughter takes it to the dump (one of her chores that gets done not nearly often enough!)
ReplyDeleteWe also pay per bag for garbage pick up, we get blue box recycle but not compost pick up. I have a small compost barrel but no fire pit or burn barrel for us. Our township gives the chippings away free which we have used in the space behind our fence & the farmer's crop field to aid in keeping the weeds down. Usually we are the last region to ever enforce a fire ban because of the conservation park. =^..^=
ReplyDeleteI remember waking up summer mornings at my grandparents in Tulsa to the smell of burning. Grampy would be out in the corner of the backyard, believe it or not, burning trash in a brick barbecue.
ReplyDeleteWe were not in the sticks - this was one of the better sections of Tulsa, with many a Cadillac in the driveway. And this also wasn't unusual behavior - it was what you did in the '50s.
And don't forget all those leaves we all burned out in the street in autumn.
Where we live in the UK we are still fortunate to have our rubbish/garbage collected on a weekly basis. How much longer that will be remains to be seen because not all local councils have weekly collections.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
We've piled downed tree debris in a big pile in our open field to burn in the winter when there is snow on the ground, but that's a hassle, too, for several reasons. You can do that if you get a burning permit and let law enforcement know before you light the pile.
ReplyDeleteWe share a wood chipper with our neighbors, but putting all those branches through it is a long, slow process and the chips don't come out a "fine" as I would like them.
All our "good" food scraps go to the poultry. I keep a compost bucket near the sink and all that doesn't go to the poultry, goes to the compost heap. My garden weeds and thinnings go into the compost, too. Hubby does an excellent job of handling the compost and it comes out looking like black dirt. Any meat scraps get burned in one of our wood burning stoves.
For a sparsely populated area we have a fantastic recycling center that is free. Any day you can dispose of glass, metal, aluminum and plastic containers there. Every now and then they have a hazardous waste disposal day where we can take small electrical appliances, light bulbs, tires, paint cans, etc. Small fee for some things.
We also have a privately owned business, otherwise known as the dump, that takes large articles such as furniture, stoves, washers, refrigerators for a reasonable fee.
Well who knew I would get so many comments about burn barrels and garbage! We all accumulate garbage, regardless of how "green" we are, and for those of us with any property at all, we accumulate plant matter. I don't think our grandparents (such as Marty's) gave disposal a second thought. To this day, I dig up bits of glass and old square nails in my own vegetable garden from years gone by. Getting rid of bigger stuff is always a problem. Maybe if things were built to last, as opposed to breaking the day after the warrantee is up... but that's another blog post.
ReplyDeletethe branches I trim during the summer I burn at the first snowfall. Country living is another world from city dwelling.
ReplyDeletethe Ol'Buzzard
We have a burn pit, but we haven't been able to use it for a good six weeks or so. It's an automatic $4000 fine for a fire so I heard!
ReplyDeleteWe can't burn in the city. Sure do wish we could!
ReplyDeleteWe can't burn in the small city in California where I live, due to air quality concerns. In fact, you can not have a new fireplace installed, again due to air quality concerns. My old house has a fireplace which I use sometimes since it is so comfy to have a fire in it.
ReplyDelete