There are many things I love about our long, rural road. From the top of the hill at the end of our driveway, I can see acres of fields split in half by the creek that swells with spring rain. The lake glistens next to the original barn built in the late 1800s.
Our family’s farm isn’t the only one on our road. Other family farms join together like a patchwork quilt, with long stretches of fields in between them.
What I didn’t realize before I moved here was how many people see those long stretches as a place for trash. When I told a new friend where we live, she told me in high school a stretch of our road was called beer can alley.
There are not many houses with people to see kids throwing their trash into the empty fields at night. My heart was saddened by this name given to our stretch of paradise.
I have to say it’s not just kids. Other people see wide open spaces as a place to drop trash in the middle of the night. When spring rolls around and the snow melts, littered trash is really noticeable before grass and weeds hide it.
One night on a walk, I noticed little crocus blooms, bursts of purple, yellow and white color along the road. However, just behind them were three discarded tires. They were not in my front yard, but still on our property with road frontage where bulbs are planted and burst upward in the spring.
Long-standing issue
Garbage has been an issue since the beginning of time. Did Eve toss the apple core? Did Adam compost it? I am not sure, but I do know over time trash has been tossed into streets, rivers and even in the ocean.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with starting the first service to collect garbage and clean the streets.
After World War II, America experienced a growth in population and also in the amount of trash produced. Glass bottles and tin cans were mass-produced and people consumed more convenience foods.
Landfills were created to solve the growing trash issue. However, in rural areas like our small family farm, people continued to burn or bury their trash. Any form of a garbage service was not available.
A walk through our woods reveals native hardwood trees and budding wildflowers, but also areas of discarded trash and old farm machinery.
I don’t blame the generations that came before us who were making a living farming the land. Their method of trash disposal was the norm. Without modern machinery, farming was harder with longer hours. They had less free time and probably didn’t view the woods as a sanctuary.
Undoing the damage
While I don’t judge or place blame, I do feel it’s time to start reversing the effects. There are several valleys on our land that were used to dump trash and then bury it. It must have been easier to cover the trash with dirt when it was in a valley.
After the snow has melted and the grass is still low, it is the perfect time to gather the trash. Before it’s time to pick flowers, I am picking decades-old garbage. Surprisingly, a lot can be recycled.
It also makes me think about the habits of my own family. We already recycle and have a compost bin, but I also have to consider our shopping habits.
Consumerism in America has been climbing since the 1970s. Not only do we have more products, but our products come in elaborate packaging materials.
It is countercultural to make these changes in my home. It is a shift away from disposable items and toward self-sufficiency. It is being a steward of the land without making environmentalism an idol.
In the 1960s, Sam Cooke recorded the song Chain Gang. His sweet voice makes working in a chain gang sound like a pleasant experience. My kids probably don’t feel the same way.
Their closest experience to a chain gang is walking through the woods and down the road with a trash bag. Together, we make a small difference in cleaning up before the flowers bloom and the fields fill up with crops.
