Must be a common thing with farmers and people out in the country.
Do they not take pride in where they live or are they just too cheap to throw trash away?
My previous neighbor was also pretty trashy for being on his 2.5 acres.
Just spent the day cleaning my new property today and I'm amazed at the amount of trash that was left behind that's all hidden in the tall weeds ( over 3ft tall).
Had an agenda today to clear the two downed trees from winter and finally get the weeds cut back with my flail mower but spent the day pulling out more trees than I knew about along with a huge pile of trash that would wreck my flail mower.
Multiple tires, huge stack of tin from the pole barn buried in the brush, cinder blocks, old chain link fence and car parts.
Also ticked off still because I wrapped an old twin mattress hidden in the weeds next to the garage in the mower yesterday so spent 2 hours today wrestling it out.
Picture of the weeds, mattress was hidden below the window of the garage. Rest of the trash we picked up today was less than 30 yards from the garage scattered all over.
by Training_Front_9546
27 Comments
A quick hour whack with the weed whacked helps find all the junk, then you hook up some recovery straps, tow it all out and cut it down after. Then hit it some of monsantos finest, in a week or two it’s all dead and you can replant in the fall.
Are you new to rural living? Especially rural living on a budget? Trash service costs money. Hauling the trash away somewhere also costs money, and time. What’s more, a lot of things that more urban/suburban people might consider trash are actually useful, or might prove useful in the future. Various sorts of scrap metal, cement chunks, blocks, bricks, and wood of many sorts are building materials waiting for a project some day, building materials one doesn’t have to go and buy. Even if it’s just rubble to incorporate into concrete, or break up to fill potholes. Roof tin scrap is useful for a lot of things until it rusts through, in which case it’s basically gone in a few more years.
That said, yes, many people could be a lot more organized with their junk….stacking it neatly under trees rather than out in the open, for instance, where it will be covered by grass and weeds quickly and become a peril for mowers, feet, animals and so on.
But in general I ask myself….could I use this anywhere some time soon or in the more distant future? Is it an active problem where it is? And how much effort am I willing to spend on “cleaning up” versus other, perhaps more pressing projects.
Perhaps worst of all, to me, have been the times when I’ve been digging garden beds in what seemed like pristine “organic” soil only to uncover an old burn pit full of melted bits of aluminum and plastic! But I get it. They had to do something with it, and that was probably from the days when there wasn’t trash service way out there in any case.
Be the change you want to see my friend. Just keep at it, little bits at a time and maybe you will inspire one other person to do the same and maybe they will inspire another etc etc. Things are definitely different out in the country and money can be tight. As frustrating as it is try not to let it bother you too much, once you get your property into shape you will feel much pride looking back at what it was.
That annoys me too. It seems like some folks don’t give a crap about the land. Yeah, I understand – it’s rural, trash pickup costs money, “it’s mine and I can do whatever I want “, whatever. IMO None of that is an excuse for scattering trash/junk around the land. A pile of brush is one thing – it will decompose and actually benefit the land and provides habitat in the meantime. I still wouldn’t just scatter brush piles all over the place.
Edit: Keep at it – you’ll prevail!
So you just moved to Country. Congratulations, you just bought a dump. Every farm has or had one or more trash piles
I have 150 acres No comment 😂
We turned down property that was being sold due to the connecting property looking like a dumping ground. It had trash everywhere and had a nasty chemical smell. We told the realtor exactly why we were not going to buy it. This was 3 years ago.
Most of the time I hate HOAs but also understand why they are around.
Our property was a small horse farm with a mostly clean and kept property when we moved in and ive def started many a pile for random shit (mostly) sorted 😂
That being said ive already had many a moment im glad to have them – same ~20yo “scrap” mower deck got its belt stolen for the brush hog then a month later got modified to fit our current mower as its deck broke and wasnt worth welding back up.
Used a pile of aged overgrown wood sitting next to the barn to fix up a couple old coops to a small machine workshop now I have my own scrapyard of mowers and atvs and random steel that I nick parts off of
That being said im finding things like an old car frame and bits scattered in the woods that must be from even before the current house was built, its just how life goes when youre kinda broke and living your best life on a farm
You’ve had decades, or even centuries, of people living in that land. Trash service is a relatively new thing for most rural locations. Hell, the wetlands that we live on was a literal dump for garbage until about 20 years ago. I’ve found fully aired tires still on the rim buried on our property. And people weren’t even living on this land until the 1970’s!!! Yes, the previous generations weren’t concerned about their refuse, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do the same. Clean your property. Respect your land. Make sure it’s better than the way you found it. This is the way.
That’s one of the big costs of donated land to local parks or land trusts. Cleaning up farm dumps including batteries, waste oil, chemicals. Usually in a ravine or erosion rills so runoff carrying contamination into local streams. Not all farmers were good stewards of the land.
Trust me. Pur 1 acre property and the surrounding bush as FULL of trash. Household trash. We get a dump.pass for free (we’ll.tax money) and the previous owner just threw garbage bags out back. I spent the first week picking household trash out of the bush.
We’ve got 2 secret land fills on our place lol. We’re fifth generation farmers. Theres equipment that’s more than twice my age that we still use. And I can’t yell you enough how often we use the junk around the place to fix or replace something.
We filled a 30 yrd bin with metal from our shelterbelt. Covered the cost of the bin and put 600$ in our pockets. Used the money to get two 20 yrd bins we filled with rotten hay and random trash. This is our second year on a somewhat well maintained farm. There’s a lot of junk but also a few $100 in fence posts, some good wire and some random tractor parts. When town is a 30 min drive each way it makes sense to stockpile shit you may use.
Keep at it, don’t get discouraged. The trash is the easy part, bucking a few cords of deadfall every season is the tough part.
I live in a suburb with nice neighbors. No one is a slob, and there’s no HOA. It’s an older street, and many of the original owners who built their homes are passing of old age. Apparently they built their homes in the 1960’s.
We bought an empty lot. The house had been demolished due to being condemned. Well, it should have been a warning. In the woods that was the back yard we found a lot of trash. Not just papers, but really bad trash. I hauled out carpet, metal of all shapes and sizes, including a 10 foot long piece of rusty rebar. Huge metal chains. Almost all of the metal is rusty. So many rust nails, screws, and cans. Fish hooks. And so much broken glass. Nail polish bottles, pop bottles, flash bulbs (of course broken), unknown bottles. Rusty batteries, crumbling plaster, aluminum foil, and plastic. So much plastic. Metal pop bottle caps, PULL TABS from pop cans! They quit making them in 1983! The worst was styrofoam and plastic bags, because they shred and make it hard to pick them up. And of course the glass and rusty metal everywhere is the most common.
Every time I would go back there after a rain, there was broken glass and rusty metal that would surface. So I started excavating. I literally dug out the trash, piece by piece. It took me 7 years. I finished this spring.
I have dogs, and I didn’t want them or anyone getting hurt.
I did ask the mayor once what year they started free trash pickup, and he said ‘Always’. They never had paid trash pickup, it was always part of the taxes. What possess people being pigs like that?
Yeah, I found 150 tires in a grown-up brier patch on a new property fun fun then a few transmissions under grass and a peace’s of carpet. The carpet is still coming out in places only fined it with the mower unfortunately.
The amount of money my random scraps of ag panel and hodge podge collection of concrete blocks would surprise you nearly as much of the time and money I spent on cleaning all of it out of the last place we lived in.
Dumps can charge fees. Why pay that when you have land you can hide stuff in?
It’s stupid, but the flaws in the logic are a challenge to make, because they’re based on probabilities and long term consequences.
I live in a lot of farmland. We get junk blown onto our property from Walmart 5 miles away.
Lol. The amount of buried rubbish I found at my property was ridiculous. Some people just can’t be stuffed.
At least you and I are blessed with the right machinery. Some people are doing it by hand.
I feel this. The place I bought a couple years ago had so much shit buried in tall grass. Old trailers, chicken wire and chicken coops. It’s such hard work getting it all out. I had to cut up the trailers with an angle grinder to get them out. On the plus side, it looks SO GODDAMNED GOOD once it’s cleared up and the grass trimmed back to lawn.
My friend had 60 acres and someone dumped about a dozen dead cars out in the woods. Some dating back to the 50s. He found a guy who hauled them off for the scrap value after we dragged them out of the woods.
We aren’t even in the country and we still found steak knives, broken glass, spoons, kids toys and god knows what else in our little backyard! I think trashy people can be found everywhere🤷♀️
Running into an old spring mattress with a flail mower is sounds comically terrible. I bet that suuuuucked
Go get it brah. It sounds like my place lol mowers are great for finding junk
I bought 13 acres and spent a LOT of time cleaning up garbage, broken glass, and continually finding MORE garbage and glass is just part of the fun!! 😀
Everyday it seems like I am picking up blown in trash on my 10a.
The PO thought black plastic was the best thing since sliced bread and used it in a lot of areas to control growth. Too bad it then got buried and is now breaking apart into the soil.
My grandma still has a trash pile outside she just throws stuff on it occasionally, looks super trashy and we’ve had to clean up multiple times