Homestead Hypocrite

I take pride in being from a farming family where ‘waste not, want not’ was one of the golden rules. Waste was not acceptable. You used something until it couldn’t be used any more. Homesteaders were recycling and upcycling long before those terms were coined. A simple glass pickle jar from the market might become a home canning jar or a chicken waterer. A tin paint can may be reincarnated as a minnow bucket. Nothing went to waste.

I have long attempted to follow the golden rules of our family and have thought that I was doing a fairly decent job of it, until today…I began my day with a quick trip to the supermarket for a few things. My list was simple, bread, milk and a pack of gum. $24.50 later I was out the door with a $4 loaf of sourdough, a bag of Portuguese rolls, a package of buttermilk biscuits, gallon of milk, 4pk of yogurt, 3 packages of gum, a half-pound of peppered turkey breast and a half-pound of oven roasted turkey breast from the deli. When I arrived home, I was quickly reminded that I had been meaning to clean out the refridgerator for some time. There was no putting it off or the food that I purchased today would be sitting on the counter getting warm due to lack of space.

I quickly got down to the task and began emptying the shelves. Within a few moments, the ‘toss’ pile had grown too large to fit on the countertop. I began filling the kitchen trash can, which in fairness to me, was already half full. I made short work of filling it to the top. Stop emptying, replace trash bag. Continue the clean out. Twenty minutes later I had filled the trash can about half full again and still had nearly a dozen glass canning jars to empty into the compost, most of which contained the remnants of jelly, salsa, sauces etc.

After all was complete, I had thrown away nearly 15 pounds of outdated, unusable food. Perhaps the saddest toss outs were the half loaf of moldy bread found in the bread drawer, the 3 containers of high end yogurt desserts and the half pound of spoiled deli turkey. All of which I had repurchased this morning. This from the household of a woman who boils down ham and turkey carcasses to can broth and make soup. In this house, we make our own cheese, jellies and bread. Unacceptable? Ludicrous? Wasteful? YES!! Unusual? No!

Statistics abound on the internet regarding the amount of food wasted in this country on a daily basis. My 15 pounds was a mere drop in the bucket. But what if we all took our ‘drops’ out of the collective bucket? What if we all began changing the way that we saw food? What would that do for our personal lives? Our families? Our communities?

I can tell you that it would put a small cushion in my savings account. It would free up a few dollars each week for a trip to the ice cream parlor. It might even pay for a gallon of gas each week.

What am I going to do differently? Well, for starters I have inventoried my refridgerator shelves. Does anyone really need four varieties of mustard? Apparently we did….traditional, spicy brown, stoneground and raspberry honey. Seven flavors of salad dressing…ranch, spicy ranch, poppy seed, green goddess, Italian, French and bacon ranch. In the words of my nine year old….Seriously? Even the tartar sauce gave me pause to rethink my purchasing habits…our shelves have both traditional and lemon flavored. To look in my refridgerator, you would think that I had a bottomless shopping budget. To look in my checkbook, you would know that I don’t.

As a conscientious homemaker, I must take a stand. As a homesteader dedicated to simplifying life, I am being forced to rethink and restructure my spending habits. To spend hours hovering over jars of apple butter, salsa, tomatoes and jellies only to toss out any savings in the form of misused produce, outdated sauces and molded cheeses is at best….wasteful. At worst…hypocritical.

I challenge all of you to rethink how you look at food and its use and misuse in your own home.

Blessings,

The Farmer’s Grandaughter.