Country living – the dump.

Country living has a lot going for it – the solitude, the beauty of raw nature, fishing off the dock, and the dump.

Not all dumps are treasure troves like this one: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/atari-games-from-landfill-sold-for-more-than-100-000-us-1.3209532

Sometimes they are small town entertainment like the one where we used to go to shoot the rats and feed the bears.But, more recently, with the renew, reuse, recycle mantra in full swing they have become something more.

One of Jeff Foxworthy’s clues to the fact you might be a redneck is “If you come home from the dump with more than you left with.” Well, by that definition, your honour, I have to plead guilty, but with an explanation.

Faced with an instant lawn weed field after a major storm transformed our beautiful forest into so much kindling wood by a so-called macro-burst 3 years ago, I needed to find a way to tame it somehow. A scythe did the job for a while but I was keeping my eyes open for some machinery to make the job a bit easier.

Then one day I saw an old mower on the metal recycling heap at the dump. I went and checked it out. It didn’t run but it turned over okay and the compression seemed decent. The housing was cracked and a couple of wheels were broken but otherwise I thought it might do the job. So home it came with me.

The missus just rolled her eyes (a pretty common occurrence around here on dump day), but I cleaned it up, put in fresh gas, and it fired up on the 3rd pull. I replaced the broken wheels with 2 spare wheels I had in stock (found earlier, also at the dump) and I now have a working lawn mower to keep the weed field at bay. Doesn’t get much better than free. Thanks Bill Mulvihill, whoever you are!