Last night, while in the midst of preparing dinner with Charlotte and Prad, I was reminded once more of the amount of garbage and recycling we can generate in one sweep. It is tremendous. For dinner alone, the list was quite long: one plastic container for mache salad, one plastic container for raspberries, two glass beer bottles, two large Ziploc bags for fish from farmers’ market, one plastic bag for lettuce, one paper bag for mushrooms from farmers’ market. The plastic bag, and the Ziploc bags, I threw in, although I was not even sure they could be recycled. Plastics are a complicated matter, and I was a bit distracted when I read the recycling guide from the city, a while ago. We are a garbage society, and I am a part of it.
I am old enough to remember the days, back in France, when the garbage collection was only once a month. There was no recycling then. The milk and yogurt came in glass containers, that we brought back to the merchant. We got five centimes for each bottle. A lot of the fruit and vegetables came from our garden. My grandmother had a cassette, a wooden box with a wooden handle, in which she carried the products of her daily pickings. For meat, she would just kill one of the rabbits or chickens that she raised. Milk came from our cows. Cows were a big deal on our farm. Many times, I heard my grandmother complain about having to get up so early to milk the cows. One of my most favorite memories is of my grandfather lifting me up into his horse carriage, and of us going to the Sunday market at Neuville, the closest town to our village. There we got sardines, and fresh fish from the covered fish market, rillettes and boudin noir from the charcuterie, and goat cheese from the goat cheese man. We saved the boulangerie for last. The line was long, and I did not mind. I knew I would be rewarded for my patience, as my grandfather always made sure to get un carquelin pour la petite, puff pastry with caramelized sugar on top. No plastic bags then, only thin paper bags. To carry all our purchases, we each had a filet, an almost weightless netlike bag that had the advantage of taking no space when empty, but that could hold a lot. Once back at the farm, my grandmother would store all the perishables in the garde-manger, a cool place in the cellar especially designed for that purpose. We did not know what the word environment meant, and we did not need to
I long for those times, of living in harmony with nature. And I also know to beware of easy sentimentality. Life on the farm was extremely hard for my grandparents. My mother did all she could to escape, and ended up marrying a man from the city. I laugh when I see the recent plethora of books, glorifying the virtue of going back to the earth, and the old ways. I am a bit of a cynic in that respect. For a healthy dose of reality, I recommend reading Little Blog in the Big Woods.
Nice post. I just started reading your blog. I enjoyed going back in time through your words, and I agree – life on the farm is not nearly as idyllic as we like to think sometimes (myself included). It seems to be a life frought with difficulty and fear that at any minute, the family could go under financially and lose everything.
That said, I am old enough to remember when not everything was packaged to the hilt with plastics, outer boxes and indestructable materials. The other day I unpacked a laptop, keyboard, and mouse. You cannot believe the packaging and how much waste was produced. Look forward to reading more from you.
[…] manteau-rao presents Garbage Society posted at La Marguerite, saying, “Observations on garbage and recycling throughout my life […]
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Plastics are driving me mad. There’s so many plastics about today and I can only recycle plastic bottles. We’ve managed to reduce the amount that goes into landfill to about 2 carrier bags a week but I feel we can do better.
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i must have missed this post, so close to my own philosophy.
no romanticism lost, i do live the hard way and do enjoy the sheer labor-product relation. i could eliminate the tools, the muscle aches and weather–go to work–make money and buy the stuff. NO.
i am addicted to the direct route to my palate, the feel of wood , the smell of cedar, warmth of logs. it takes all day to do it.
it took all day to get ready for work and come home too tired to cook something i bought in plastic casings.
so, i chose the difference–direct approach to this existence, much as my grand-mother did. Mother had a maid, grand- mother had me and 24 hours a day.
they no longer have cows, they buy food at Auchan. and are so unhappy, they have psychiatrists in their address books under the frequently called numbers.
nadine, you are my inspiration, a rare example of a sister who walks her talk to the end.
Life in the farm… only idyllic to those who are far from it. Same for eating homemade… Sauce béarnaise, for instance, is great but pretty sure the woman who used to be charged of it would like to alternate with industrial béarnaise. Same for those meals which take weeks, months to prepare… What can I say, it’s life!
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[…] Manteau Rao presents Garbage Society on La Marguerite, in which she compares the throw-away culture she lives in now with the simpler, […]
Good post, we seem to have over complicated things so much to get to the amount of trash that seems to be normal to our current way of life.
I try to reduce as much as possible and currently buy food from the local city farm or a nearby greengrocers and have started growing some too now we have access to our back garden.
I don’t use plastic carrier bags as I have several fabric bags.
[…] Manteau Rao presents Garbage Society on La Marguerite, in which she compares the throw-away culture she lives in now with the simpler, […]