Prairie Recycling

Canning when produce is in season

Does anyone else get upset watching Fixer Upper on "Demolition Day" when Chip takes a sledge hammer to the kitchen cabinets?  Most of those cabinets are perfectly functional, if not for a modern kitchen then at least for a garage or workshop.  Sometimes they are almost like new and the only fault to be found is style.  It really bothers me to see them torn apart and thrown into the dumpster.  Surely someone would like to have them!

I confess, my shelves contain too many recycled plastic containers, and almost every scrap of fabric, unless it is too small for the tiniest quilt piece, is saved for a quilt I will probably never make.  I was raised to be thrifty by parents who went through the Depression when they were young, and being wasteful in my home was practically a crime.  Mother's best soups and stews always had not only left-over meat and vegetables but the left-over juice when all the vegetables had been eaten.  There was always a jar in the refrigerator for scraps awaiting the next soup.

Finding entertainment at home instead of going out

Consequently, I appreciate the entries in Isaac's journal about utilizing scraps and recycling and repurposing items when their original usefulness changed.

One of my favorite entries describes Isaac getting the wooden boxes in which coffee was shipped to Doc Dix's store and using them to make an incubator.  Unfortunately, he didn't describe the details--did he set the incubator on a shelf over his stove to keep the eggs warm or did he use a candle?  Did he plaster the boxes to keep them from burning or scorching?  Did he make wire shelves for the eggs?  I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that neighbors brought him eggs, which he marked somehow to know to whom the chicks would belong when they hatched.  I learned not to mark hard-boiled eggs with a lead pencil because that might cause lead poisoning to leach through the shell, but would Isaac have used a pencil to identify the chicks?  I also know he took the incubator to a neighbor to turn the eggs regularly when he was busy in the field and couldn't do that.

Using Mother Nature's Bounty

Getting wood was a long trip to town and expensive for homesteaders, so anything that could be salvaged was saved.  As a bachelor, he didn't have a wife to preserve things from his garden.  When the sandhill plums and the peaches from his garden were ripe, he sometimes ate so much he gave himself a belly ache.  Watermelon was another annual treat.

Our ancestors definitely believed in "Waste Not, Want Not," and that was certainly passed to me.  I remember telling my niece when she stayed with us for a few days as a little girl that it was better to wait and save for items of quality than to impatiently buy something cheaper that would not last.  I wonder if she remembers my telling her that.  The American economy would probably suffer if all Americans followed that advice, but there might be more repair shops along our Main Streets like there once were if we followed that advice today.

One of the pleasures of reading Isaac Werner's journal is learning about his ingenuity as he builds things and repairs what he has.  I fear that is becoming a lost art.  I hope some of you share your own family's "Waste Not, Want Not" inventiveness.