Nothing goes to Waste!

Growing up in a farming family, we were always taught to "clean our plates." Sometimes we were told to finish all the food on our plates because there were "starving kids in China or Africa."  I think the point being made is that it is not a good thing to waste food.  That life lesson has stuck with me over the years.  We always eat leftovers until they are gone OR until we get tired of them.  Then we freeze them and will eat them at a later time.

For some reason when I'm in restaurants, it causes me discomfort to see people pick around at their plates, pushing food from side to side and then at the end of the meal, the waiter or waitress will remove their half eaten plate, throwing the contents away.  We'll ask for a 'doggie bag' and bring anything home that we don't eat.

Bottom line, I just don't like to waste things.  Being a farmer, I understand all too well how much work, how many resources and energy and time went into planting, growing, harvesting, butchering, packaging, transporting, and preparing of the food until it got to your plate.  If you know about the work involved in producing food or were involved in producing it, I think you are less likely to waste it.

As the graph from the USDA below illustrates, we've seen a wholesale change in the American labor force. In 1840, almost 70% of the workforce was involved in agriculture.  In 2000, less than 2% are involved in agriculture.  That's a huge drop and one of the reasons (I think) for how wasteful people can be.  We changed from being a society of producers to a society of consumers.  I think that is tragic.

Image Credit

At Our Makers' Acres Family Farm, we don't waste things.  That speaks for the humans that live on our farm and the animals, too.  Nothing goes to waste.  Just take a look at the chickens below.  This Saturday I weeded the bean patch.  I have a second crop of Contender Green Beans and Roma Italian Green Beans blooming now and there was a strong crop of weeds coming up.  Once I weeded the four rows of weeds, I tossed the weeds to the chickens.  They love to eat the weeds.  They'll convert that 'trash' into beautiful eggs. Nothing goes to waste!

One man's trash is another chicken's treasure!

The other afternoon we harvested our crop of sweet corn.  Well, after you remove the ears, there is still a big corn stalk.  What do you do with that?  Well, we toss it over to the fence and the cows come a runnin'!  They'll first eat all the green leaves off of the corn.  Then they'll pick around and eat anything else that is left.  Usually there will be a few hard stalks remaining and I'll scoop that up and put on the compost pile, where it will be eventually worked back into the soil.  Nothing goes to waste!

"Second harvest"

It's not only the chickens and cows that get involved.  Old Nellie will eat the cornstalks as well.  She just keeps turning her head from side to side looking out for the cows as they don't like to share with her and will come head butt her away.

Nellie's fair share

Jesus Christ didn't like to waste food either.  Notice what He did after He fed the 5,000:

John 6:12New International Version (NIV)

12 When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”

Clean your plate.  Don't waste your food.  Tenets leaned as a child, passed on to our children, and our animals as well.