I happened upon a Freegan blog the other night. I keep Ghost Town Farm by Novella Carpenter in my reader, I think it's neat that she has goats in the city. In one post, she linked to her sister, Riana's blog, These Days in French Life. Novella had been to France visiting Riana and spoke of the abundance of food available for gleaning, so I was intrigued. I clicked over and read a bit of Riana's blog, and she linked to her food blog, Garlic Breath, where I learned she is a Freegan.
It reminded me of when we were living below poverty level. We used to dumpster dive right in the mobile home park we lived in. It was incredible all the things we found that people had thrown away. We never found food, but once I found two rolls of chickenwire, brand new, just thrown away. I used to find plastic clothes baskets with just a little crack in them. We'd find clothing. When we were moving from that mobile home, we found enough brand new carpeting in the back of a carpet store to cover the floor in the whole place. All free. I have found so many treasures from dumpsters.
When we moved out here and got our goats and chickens, I was only working three days a week, instead of seven. Mr. A was a full time stay at home dad. Life was so much more pleasant and fulfilling than it is now. Of course we had less money, but the extra time was totally worth it.
We used to do our grocery shopping together every Friday. Sometimes I'd get lucky at one of the grocery stores and they would be sorting through the vegetables, throwing out the less-than-perfect produce. I'd look into the can and nearly gasp at all the vegetables and fruit that was going to be thrown into a dumpster. I'd ask if I could have the produce for my goats, and occasionally I'd be able to take it home (often it was already spoken for). I would get such a thrill out of taking that produce home, for I knew that about three-quarters of it would be perfectly useable. The only problem is you have to process it immediately. There was way too much for the refrigerator, and it would spoil without doing something with it. So I'd have to blanche a bunch of it for freezing, pull off all the bad parts for the chickens and goats, saving the good parts. I was at the store the other morning and looked into the garbage can… saddened by what I saw in there. Such perfectly good produce, but I have no extra time or energy to even think about asking for it.
When we lived in the big city most of the stores had a discount clearance section. It was awesome, and I made a lot of banana bread. One time, my sister bought a flat of grapes that were starting to wrinkle. She thought it would be a fun project for the children in her daughter's first grade class to try making raisins. The teacher ended up reporting my sister to the principal, accusing her of bringing rotten food to the school. It was shocking to me, and to my sister. Heaven help us if we were at the store at the same time, we were practically fighting over who would get what.
The stores out in my area don't have a discount produce section. I miss the thrill of getting those great prices.
I guess if I lived in an area like Riana lives, I would be interested in trying the freegan lifestyle. I guess I think it would be a challenge. But it's not something I could do currently.
What about you? Could you ever consider being a freegan?
I love Riana’s blog!
I think I could be a freegan. Well, partly anyway. 🙂 It’s funny how I remember back to when we lived in a 600 sq ft condo and I made $7/hr. and how happy I was. Of course, at the time I dreamed about making much more money and owning a house, and now that I’ve got that I want to go back to the past. 🙂
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Mrs. Money, wow, small world! I never guessed you would read Riana’s blog. I mean, it totally makes sense that you would. But there are like millions of blogs out there! Do you read her sister’s blog, too? I enjoy both blogs. I love how resourceful Riana is with the food. Not having a job helps though, because she has a lot of time to devote to it when it comes in and has to be processed. I remember when we were much poorer but we had so much more time. I long to go back to those times. I wish we could find a way to lower our costs so I could retire! Thanks for visiting and commenting! Mrs. A
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Heck no! Even if I could put forth the energy — which the fatigue makes impossible — there is no way that I could ever keep Tim’s consumerism down to the freegan standards. Yeesh, I get hives just thinking about it!
Still, I think it’s an excellent movement and really appreciate that there are people so dedicated to a) being frugal and b) not consuming unnecessarily.
And Mrs. A, I love you dearly but, as far as I’m concerned, any time NOT spent milking goats and/or cleaning up after goats & chickens is worth its weight in gold. I am impressed/puzzled that you look back on it so fondly, but don’t forget, too, that nostalgia tends to be a tad rosier than the actual circumstances. That said, if you ever get chickens again, I guess Tim will know where to go for fresh eggs!
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Hi Abigail! 🙂 You’re right, it would take a lot of energy to be a freegan! And too much worry. I agree. 🙂 And I have to tell you… we still have chickens and goats! My hubby takes care of feeding and gathering eggs. My main responsibility is milking. Unfortunately we only have an abundance of eggs during the spring, when they cost $0.69/dozen at the grocery store, and then of course no one wants to pay us $3/dozen – it costs the same amount of money month in month out to feed them, and we don’t get a lot of eggs. If we sold every dozen we got, we would just about break even over the year. And our hens are all getting older, so they don’t produce as much as the new layers do… it’s tempting to get more, but then we need to “do” something with the older layers… and that’s never much fun. So we just keep feeding them and let them live out their retirement in their lifelong home. 🙂 Thanks for commenting!! Mrs. A
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PS. I should say that I’m all for rescuing abandoned stuff. I’m always checking a corner in our apartment complex to see what has been tossed. We’ve gotten a perfectly nice TV stand (it needed one set of screws and washers) and a computer cart.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Abigail, YES! I love dumpster diving. I like the way you put it though. “Rescuing abandoned stuff”. 🙂 I tell you there is nothing that makes a mother and father proud to see their 20 year old son (AJ) pulling office chairs from the dumpster in the office complex where we go to church. LOL! I can’t believe the things people throw away. Mrs. A
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