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16 • April 2016 • COAST • www.coast-magazine.com C ourteous outdoorsmen and women adhere to the admo- nition, “Garbage in, garbage out,” by packing any trash and garbage to haul home, rather than litter the pristine environ- ment in which they have been camping or trekking. Without any municipal services for trash, garbage or sewage, we live like that, too, on a daily basis. It is sort of a game to me. How can I reuse what I own? How can I reduce what we buy and haul home? I don’t want our property to look like those ugly rural hamlets cluttered with years of rusting and broken crapola and overflowing Dumpsters, so I reduce and repurpose what I can. GARBAGE Despite poor attempts at compost piles, I am able to feed just about every piece of leftover food to our domestic animals and the gardens. Eggshells, for example, are great sources of calcium. Our chickens and ducks need a regular supply to ensure firm shells, but we have to disguise the material so they don’t start pecking newly laid eggs before we collect them. We pulverize the shells and mix them with other snacks. The rest I mix in the garden soil, especially where I plant tomatoes and squash. Red foods, like tomatoes, peppers and apples, are particular favor- ites of the omnivorous chickens. If one hen grabs a tasty nubbin, the others chase her around the yard like children on a playground. They adore peanuts and will actually jump in the air for them. Weeping yogurt, moldy cheese, and leftover chicken skin (uh, yeah) all meet with clucks of approval. The ducks are pickier, but if I float some veggie snacks, like cab- bage, in water (which makes sense for aquatic birds), they provide at least entertainment, and perhaps nutrition. Foods that the fowl cannot eat, like the peels of onions, garlic, avocado and bananas, are frozen until spring, when they are trenched into the gardens, below the reach of ravens. Coffee grounds are easy to save for potatoes and berry bushes, which like the acidity. Lemon peels are sprinkled on top of garden soil to deter aphids, but orange peels are saved for a special purpose; they flavor my husband’s home brewed chimay. Bears have never bothered my gardens – the woods and water are filled with tastier fare – but what about meat bones? That was a prob- lem I needed to address. After a meal, I boil them for stock, then toss them to the chickens, which nibble them clean. Later, I burn them in the woodstove. The bones contain calcium, of course, and if you think of a fertilizer package, bones would read 0-12-0 for nutrients. The occasional bone mixes in about five gallons of wood ash (0-3-1, generated each winter month), and together, they leaven the claylike soil in our river valley location. TRASH We try to avoid purchasing products in glass, unless, like jalape- nos, which we love, they come in wide mouth jars that we can use in all sorts of ways. They store nails, clean paint brushes, collect gaso- line drips, and even function as a mini-terraria over tender plants in our unheated greenhouse. Vinegar jugs are strong enough to reuse for several years, cut into feed scoops or left intact to water animals and collect birch sap. Cans, however, are pretty useless. Other than shooting targets strung from fishing line (fun!), we just accumulate an occasional load to tote back to Anchorage. Light cardboard, paper Packmentality Creativerepurposingkeepsthehomesteadflowing COURTESY LAURA EMERSON Laura and Bryan Emerson’s chicken devour leftover food scraps, in- cluding chicken skin, as part of their daily feed. It allows the Emersons to keep their waste to a minimum. with Laura Em off the