Many times I screw up, here on The Accidental Farm. I don’t always show you. Behold!

Seems that our root cellaring skills need a little help. What you are looking at is a box of frozen, moldy squash. While we appropriately put the butternut squash harvest into a bin filled with straw, we did NOT place said bin into 40-45 degree space. Instead we put all the bins (carrots, potatoes, squash and apples) on the back porch. Most years this probably would have worked out just fine since it serves mostly as a walk in cooler in the winter months. However this year, with our arctic temperatures, we just ended up with frozen squash that eventually went moldy when the temperature allowed them to thaw just a bit.

Now, I am a little bit on the anal side when it comes to waste. The day that I found these left me more than a normal amount of upset. This was mostly because I could have donated this food as opposed to leaving it to rot on the back porch. I even tried to cook some of it (not the moldy ones) but Brian caught onto me and refused to put up with ingesting something akin to dumpster food. Thankfully we have the birds to gobble up such mistakes.

I think that my issues around waste (and by contrast, saving things) come from the fact that I was born under the sign of Cancer. Load on top of that that my grandfather was a junker (he ran a mini junkyard in the back of his garage to sell scrap metal) and that my Nona Kaye patrolled garage and estate sales as if they held the secrets to the mysteries of the universe, and you might get a clue to the forces within me that I’m up against.

In the winter, I literally cringe every time I have to throw out coffee grounds and tea bags because it is just too hard to compost. As it is we feed the chickens all vegetarian and grain scraps, the dog gets just about all our meat scraps, burn all paper and cardboard and rewash the ziplocs (unless they have something nasty like hot dogs in them.) When we eat out, I even order vegetarian dishes made without dairy so that I can bring home my scraps for the chickens. Really? Is this totally necessary?

But then, I think about it this way…

Did you know that every grocery store has a box (sometimes referred to as “the yellow box”) that they put out into the garbage filled with produce that is still edible, but simply wilted or browning and deemed unattractive to the consumer?

According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America’s food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills.

The next time you are at a farm stand/farmer’s market ask the farmer what they do with the produce that is bruised. Most farmers say that they feed them to the chickens/pigs/etc., however some do not.

When I lived in Brooklyn, Red Jacket Orchards from the Finger Lakes region, would sell apples, pears, grapes etc. at all the markets around NYC. One day I noticed them tossing bruised peaches into a box underneath the table. I asked what they did with them and they told me they just threw them away. I asked if I could have them. I took home about 5 pounds of peaches that simply had a brown spot or was a little mushy… for free. I made something like 4 deep dish peach pies (I didn’t know how to can then and my freezer space was the size of a bread box) and about 8 cups of jam. So next time, if the mush and the brown doesn’t scare you, save yourself some money and some landfill space.

And hey, if you don’t want it, grab it for me. I’ll make you some jam for your efforts.

Tags: Chickens, Gardening, Winter