Inner City Farmer

Question: What’s the difference between me and those creepy old men you see rummaging through dumpsters?
Answer: Not much.

I am in full-on scavenging mode right now. Some of my neighbor/friends are building an addition on to the back of their house and I took the opportunity to extract some goodies from their industrial dumpster, mostly pieces of wood, but I also found a functional screen door. One way or another these newly found materials will get used.

I suppose the resurgence of my desire to scavenge has to do with the steady decline of summer. Temperatures are now only getting up to the 90s for three or four hours in the late afternoon, which is sweet relief compared to the heart of the summer. With cooler temps my need to get outside and build and dig and move things around increases tenfold. The Farm is about to return to life after a long summer of dormancy….

It feels strange to be so proprietary about a Starbucks, but I can’t help it. While searching for more used coffee grounds today, I hit the mother lode at the ‘Bucks on 45th and Lamar, acquiring about ten times as much as I got from Epoch last weekend. So, fellow scavengers, steer clear. This is my ‘Bucks.

Just kidding. There’s more than enough waste to go around in this world. A wise man/smart group would set up some sort of program that ensured that all coffee grounds used by the Starbucks Corporation ended up going back into our rapidly depleted soil instead of heaped atop junked cars in our landfills. I have to believe that we as a species are going to start realizing that recycling our waste products and replenishing our soil makes sense economically, environmentally, and morally. Here’s a situation where we can do both at once.