Notes

So you can’t burn your garbage out in the country anymore in New York … 🛢️ 🔥

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I concede maybe that’s a good thing, in he sense that too many people back in the day had burn barrels, tossed all their burnable trash in it, lit it with a match and walked away, allowing plastics and other chemicals in their trash to smolder away for half the day ruining many a nice country night for people who lived downwind.

There’s a reason why they call the smoke from smoldering burn barrels hillbilly incense, as you drive those back roads in Pennsylvania with those windows rolled down – or a million other back roads in Red States. It can be kind of nasty – as they say burning toxic trash is a national past time out in the country. Probably is, people like fire and not hauling all their burnable garbage to the transfer station and spending a bunch of money to get rid of it. It’s fun to watch things burn.

It Burns

I always told myself for years when I moved back to the country, built my off-grid homestead I’d move to a free state where there wasn’t all those restrictions on open burning. But alas it seems like I’m settling in New York State with my good paying professional career. I’ll have land where I can have campfires and bonfires, and I’m thinking about becoming a volunteer firefighter.

The truth is I don’t want to burn toxic waste. I want to burn things that I can use the ash on my garden and to enhance my land and restore soil fertility. It’s not like I generate that much trash, especially now that I’m into healthy eating. A lot more of my trash now is compost, it belongs in a compost pile with manure, leaves and waste paper. I also am more concerned about fire risk, soon to be the owner of a homestead that I designed, built and put much of my hard earned money into. I don’t want my neighbors smoldering trash fire to become my wildfire.

It’s not to say I won’t burn things or have lots of fires. But it won’t be in a burning barrel or involve burning excessive amounts of toxic plastics, especially things like PVC lead coated wire or ABS plastics used in electronics and structural plastics. Somethings, unfortunately if you can’t reuse them are best for the landfill. And a lot of things don’t burn well at any rate, despite us rednecks of the world trying to burn everything we can.

Smolders

I do think I’ll save most paper and cardboard to burn, along with film plastics, wrappers and feed bags. They’re excellent starters for campfires and bonfires and if you’re regularly having fires your unlikely to accumulate much. Burn it hot with minimal smell or smoke. Sit back and enjoy a cold beer while enjoying the fire. I figure if I’m building on raw land, going to have a lot of brush and leftover wood scrap to burn, providing many a nice summer night out in the country. Plus some junk mail is good for starting woodstove fires.

A combination of composting, eating healthy, producing my own food, burning non-toxic trash and compressing recyclables such a hard plastics and cans for taking to the transfer station, my hope is to get it down to the point where I can visit the transfer station maybe twice a year – to participate in urban recycling, get rid of broken appliances that can’t be repaired and other toxic trash. I don’t plan to produce a lot of trash nor do I plan to burn much – just papers and wrappers for starting fires.

Part two of summer vacation 🏖

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Yesterday was a tough day, my body and mind was still recovering from the trip down to Pennsylvania. 53 miles riden and nearly four hours driving, while pleasant left me with a feeling of malease most of yesterday. My mind was consumed with my thoughts of what I saw in Penna, the parks, the small towns and rundown farms with their stinky blackened burn barrels and livestock, the gun stores, churches, Trump and Jesus signs. And that Dummies Guide to Cannabis e-book I’m listening to about smoking pot, which mostly a story about being a Debbie Downer and all the pitfalls of being a stoner when the federal government doesn’t like that despite that elderly man in the White House that is supposedly better than the alternative.

I won’t say all of yesterday was a Debbie Downer but somehow that malease just dominated the day, 🤮 I didn’t want to do much of anything. And it’s not like I smoked or drunk much after coming back from Penna. I was too tired and I only had one beer 🍻 left. I just was so exhausted and my mind processing trying to figure out who I am and what I believe. I mean, I love God, Guns and Old Glory but also Acid, Amesty and Abortion. 🇺🇸 I think all my liberal friends are sure I’m conservative and a Trump supporter who burns his garbage 🔥 and owns several guns, 🔫 while my conservatives think I’m a lazy pot smoking hippie 🪴 who likes the Grateful Dead and Peter Paul and Mary, and Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony is a vegetarian who likes tofu fried with his Mariaville farmed bacon and zucchini. 🥓 Did you ever have to make up your mind, pick up on one and leave the other behind? It’s not often easy, it’s not often kind. Or so the Loving Spoonful sing on the radio 📻.

Yesterday was the laziest of lazy days. 😁 Eventually I ended up driving down to the Wood Lane Park 🏞 in Ithaca and riding up to Buttermilk Falls State Park and swimming 🏊 for a bit but it wasn’t until later in the afternoon, well after lunch time. Got ice 🧊 and more alcohol 🍻 and milk and eggs. 🥚 The milk I brought from home spoiled as that cooler got too warm, which is always a problem during summer vacation 🏖. I wanted to get clams 🦪 but the seafood counter closed early at Wegmans and Tops is gone from the strip. Skipped getting sweet corn 🌽 at that stand in T-burg because why get it without clams? I’ll get more fresh later in the week. Rode 12 miles around the city, 🚲 and then down to Cayuga Lake which like usual stinks from the sewage treatment plants, blue green algea and nutrient pollution. 👃 Those swings along the lake and you do get used to the smell. Humans have a natural distaste for sulfuric compounds but after a bit of exposure they grow to like them, such as with the case with silage and cattle. 🐮 Also did a brief visit to Ithaca Falls but did not stay long as the lazy day went by too quickly.

Like usual I got back to camp around 9 pm,  🏕 ended up frying up onions breaded eggs with cornmeal and turmeric and served with Greek yogurt and hot sauce and probably too much beer 🍻 and maybe a puff or two of the Critical Thinking while listening to that Debbie Downer Dummies Guide to Cannabis. 🚲 And then I hopped on my mountain bike and rode several miles on dirt roads and back country trails to God knows where, ending up at Foster Pond 🐸 looking up at stars ✨ seeing mostly clouds ☁️ and one shooting star 💫 and listening to the frogs. Then I came back to camp, had a rip roaring fire 🔥 laid in the hammock, relaxed but paying attention listening to the Grateful Dead 🔊 until well after midnight, nice loud because it’s just me and the cows 🐮 here in the wilderness. Maybe I was paranoid about a Schuyler County cop 👮 stopping me for DUI on a mountain bike on a back country trail but I realized that was stupid, I would be more likely to break a bone or be trampled by cattle 🦵all alone in the wilderness without a clue of the world around me.

Thunderstorm ⛈ are coming this afternoon, but this morning is pretty decent but humid 😰. I am heading down to Watkins Glen in a bit, to ride the Cayuta Valley Trail. 🚲 I think I will inflate the tube ⭕ and go for a float on Seneca Lake when the thunderstorms aren’t pouring around and lightening is not close. ⚡ Then during the bad thunderstorms, go to the Watkins Glen library 🖥 and create that IOICODE and complete that data request I got yesterday. Then maybe ice cream 🍦 at Glen Dairy Bar. I figure the Watkins Glen Pool is a no go for today, because one clap of thunder and that is done. And maybe try to get clams at Tops. 🦪 Tomorrow will probably be a stay in the National Forest day, as it looks wet and stormy ☔ but that won’t keep me from riding 🚲 and exploring the back country. It would be a good day for clams and sweet corn, especially drinking the clam and beer broth when I’m cold and wet. 😋