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April 2016 • COAST • www.coast-magazine.com • 17 wrappings and envelopes serve as tinder throughout the year as well as tear and chew toys for the rabbits. Sturdy boxes corral small items in the plane and outbuildings and are cut up to provide insulation in every nesting box. HUMAN AND ANIMAL WASTE Rather than purchase fertilizer, we use the poop from the rabbits we also raise for meat, because their manure is one of the few gentle enough to spread fresh in a garden (not dried). I collect pounds and pounds of the stuff and haul it in plastic sleds to various gardens every spring and fall. During the summer I fortify my gardens with a “compost tea,” composed of green weeds, dry weeds, rabbit pellets and molasses. I aerate 15 gallons at a time overnight with a small aquarium pump. Meanwhile, the matted straw in the coop and run are useful, too. Each fall, I mulch the strawberries (you know why they have that name, right?) with it. During the growing season the straw deters the less determined weeds around vegetables and flowers. For garden ad- vantages like these, I recommend rais- ing rabbits and chickens, even if owners do not eat the eggs or the animals. Some intrepid people use compost- ing toilets and repurpose the waste. Our home is too cold, so we just use an outhouse. Summer urine, though, I do dilute (5-10:1) and pour around the exterior spigot. To date, I cannot report any lusher foliage in the vicinity, but my property is an ongoing experiment and this is one of them. These sorts of efforts are not arduous or time consuming because we live in a household of two people. My biggest project is yard work. We live in the middle of a forest and are acutely aware that we are only one lightning strike away from becoming crispy critters. So when the snow recedes each spring, I see tinder in the making – deadfall trees, mountains of alder and birch leaves, masses of dry grasses and ferns. YARD DEBRIS At first, we just amassed huge burn piles. Then I tried to think of better uses of all this organic material. Some does still “go up in smoke.” To me, the weirdest is that my husband actually collects and dries moose pellets to smoke his bees during weekly hive checks (the smoke lulls them). Rotten and damp wood creates smoky fires good for deterring mosquitoes in June, and the resulting ash is distributed throughout the yard. We save birch bark for excellent fire starter throughout the year, and cut alder into small pieces to flavor smoked meats. Wood products find other uses, too. Blueberries are just about the only plants that don’t suffocate under sawdust and actually like it, so whenever my husband chops up a spruce or birch tree, I collect and redistribute a bucketful around the roots of those delectable bushes. Slim alder branches form a lattice to obscure the view under our porch. Huge piles of birch and alder leaves feed a mulch- ing machine, hour after spring hour. Slowly that mulch is elevating muddy low spots in the yard and improving the soil. Bagsful even replace straw in the chicken coop for several months. It smells good to me and the birds love rooting around for any dead (or live) larvae and bugs that came along for the ride. Speaking of bugs, dead bees and flies, as well as voles that we sweep up here or there are fed to the chickens for a welcome protein snack. Our soil is peaty, without rocks until about 4 feet down. When we dug our well, though, we spewed up a lot of rock and gravel. Small stones now lie beneath the drip lines of buildings. Large ones line our fire pit. Throughout the growing season, our rabbits chow down on any piles of weeds I bring them every day (except for acrid elderberry boughs). Gnawing on log chunks is good for their teeth. In the autumn, I store fire- weed stalks and birch branches for their winter nibbles. Yard weeds are food for us, too. I like fresh dandelion greens quite a bit in tea and cooking. Dried strawberry, raspberry and fireweed leaves make a gentle winter tea, and fresh and dry yar- row, chickweed, plantain and elderberry flowers work their wonders in various medicinal salves. Some people are exceptionally talented at making whimsical art and furniture out of found objects. Alas, I am not one of them. But I do derive a satisfying sense of “getting something for nothing” when I am able to repurpose the trash, gar- bage and waste products we accumulate throughout the year. COURTESY LAURA EMERSON The Emerson ducks are pickier eaters, but they do like cabbage float- ing in water. COURTESY LAURA EMERSON Table scraps, bones, animal andhuman waste and yard debris all find a second life in the Emerson home. merson e grid