Helping to reduce your neighbor's waste stream to your benefit (and theirs!)

Some context:

We live in Winston County MS. ~10,000 population. ~5,000 of that population is in the city limits of the county seat, Louisville. Our property is 6 acres with a 2k sqft barn that we parked our RV inside of and was part of a larger 8 acre property that was part of several hundred acres, originally. We are outside of city limits but we have a neighbor about 100 feet away to the east and 100 yards away to the west. The neighbor to the east was the home place of the original larger place that was split up, hence why we live in a barn next to a fancy brick house, that is not ours.

The neighbor to the west is the daughter and son in law to the neighbor to the northwest that bought up several hundred acres and sold portions off over time to control who his neighbors were. All surrounding households are conventional consumerists, conservative values, etc.

What I want to say:

As time has helped our relationships develop, the northwest neighbor has been bringing his deer carcasses over for our chickens to pick clean. He kills around 10 a year. He has also started killing some deer for us, which is great because we are raising, soon to be, 6 children. 8 years old down to currently incubating. I do not have time to hunt and he enjoys hunting, I enjoy free meat, match made!

I read a thread on here (cant remember which or I would link) about shredding paper and cardboard for worm beds. I don't have worm beds but I do have chickens, that while I enjoy the eggs, I mainly have to produce compost. Now all three neighbors bring me their cardboard boxes from a multitude of amazon deliveries they get. I am producing about 3-4 5 gallon buckets of shredded cardboard a week now. This is extremely helpful and a great carbon resource. I add to the chicken coop, mix in meat rabbit nest boxes, cover humanure pile and pile up for our boys to pee on. They love peeing outside, who can blame them.

I take all their boxes and end up not being able to use some that have certain types of ink. I also have to peel the plastic tape off and deal with the occasional odd happening. Todays box delivery had their dog hair from brushing the dog in one box and partially sucked down hard candy in one of the other ones. Small price to pay.

What I want to ask:

What experience do you have with your neighbors along this line?

I was thinking of asking for kitchen scraps but I am not sure how that conversation would go. I think I would need to be clear on what we can take because I would not want to work through moldy leftovers to pick out things for the chickens. Then again, I could just dedicate one of my 4x4x4 compost spots to just compost everything they give us as a whole. I currently only compost humanure because the chickens and meat rabbits eat everything else we have for scraps. I could provide them with a nice stainless compost bin for inside or 2 or 5 gallon bucket with lid to stay outside that we would pick up, clean and put back for them to use. Thoughts and experience on that are appreciated.

What other things could we move from their garbage pickup to my property as a value add?

I think getting any of them onboard with humanure composting would be difficult, even though I'd happily take it and compost that s***. So that may be off the list.

Fallen leaves, cut grass,broken off tree limbs, and brush prunings are the wastes I normally get from neighbor's.

What is the rain like where you live?
Most houses have downspouts and the water has to go somewhere.
Directing their down spouts onto your land may be possible.

If you want to broach the topic of gathering food scraps, maybe bring them some eggs and a bucket full of finished compost as a gift.

William Bronson wrote:Fallen leaves, cut grass,broken off tree limbs, and brush prunings are the wastes I normally get from neighbor's.

What is the rain like where you live?
Most houses have downspouts and the water has to go somewhere.
Directing their down spouts onto your land may be possible.

If you want to broach the topic of gathering food scraps, maybe bring them some eggs and a bucket full of finished compost as a gift.

We average 58" a year. The old home place (east neighbor) is on the top of a gently sloping hill. Our 6 acres has a very gentle slop on most of it. I have cut 3 swales and have 6 fruit trees on the down hill side of 2 of them. Nothing in the 3rd on yet, I plan to add fruit bushes on all of them and I have some comfrey growing in 2 of them currently.

I also have 3 other swales that water the rabbit and chicken garden, they are about 15' apart terraced going down a slope by the coop/hutch area. I also route my grey water to those 3 swales and we can grow lettuce, arugula, comfrey and some other things almost year round to feed the chickens and rabbits.

We typically get 2 drought periods over the summer and won't have rain for 6 weeks or more sometimes. Then, like last night, we can get 2"-4" in a storm. I noticed our first summer that the grass and other vegetation does well in or on the edge of any depression in the ground even during the droughts while everywhere else, it looks a little rough.

Piping our greywater to the 3 swales I mentioned above is extremely helpful. We use castile soap and only castile soap for everything. I just tell the neighbors it is irrigation, which it is and don't tell them about the greywater. I would insert some pics but I am not on social media and so not sure where I could put the pictures on the web to then paste the URL.

So the long answer long is; yes, I get all of the east neighbor's runoff. They travel and are retired and have no interest in gardens/livestock/etc. so I don't think this will change.

Not everyone has a neighbor who hunts that can give their meat scrapes so I like Williams suggestion of fallen leaves, grass clipping and vegetable scraps.

I want to add that neighbors with chickens usually have excess bedding to give away.

Also there are barns with lots of manure, just know the source of the feed.

Around fall there are usually Fall displays that might have pumpkins and straw bales that will be handy for a lot of uses.

My neighbors generate lots of beer bottles though I have no use for those.

Anne Miller wrote:Not everyone has a neighbor who hunts that can give their meat scrapes so I like Williams suggestion of fallen leaves, grass clipping and vegetable scraps.

I want to add that neighbors with chickens usually have excess bedding to give away.

Also there are barns with lots of manure, just know the source of the feed.

Around fall there are usually Fall displays that might have pumpkins and straw bales that will be handy for a lot of uses.

My neighbors generate lots of beer bottles though I have no use for those.

This is a really great community. The neighbor that kills the deer for me is the one I give most of my excess eggs to. This area will typically extend the deer season into Feb because there are so many deer. I can walk over to his house and ask him to shoot a deer for me and he'll bring it over within 24 hours. He owns a lot of property and has established many food plots and deer stand locations. One of his sons hunts as well and I think mainly for the big bucks so I just cut the head off and give it back to them and keep the rest.

Like I mentioned above, my time has a lot of demands with large homeschooled family, work ( I have 4 part time remote jobs), homestead, posting on permies . I used to hunt as a kid and I really enjoy processing animals but the hunting part of it is something I am glad to have someone else, who enjoys it, take care of. I don't mind killing the animals but this man sits in the woods every single day because he really enjoys it and I don't have the time or dedication for that so I am happy that he is happy to do it. He will go out and watch the deer and feeders/food plots year round so he is a unique guy in that only 10-15 of those days he would actually harvest an animal but he is out there year round.

I always imagined being in the middle of nowhere with not a neighbor in site. We have stayed in our rv in locations like that for extended periods. I cannot imagine, having lived here with the neighbors within sight, being in a different location.

Thank you for the suggestions, I had not thought about the manure sourcing. That is too bad about your neighbors and the bottles. If you can get them to switch to cans, you could recycle them and get some cash.

It sounds like your neighbor is stewarding the lands under his watch with great care!

If the retired/traveling people need someone to house it, or if they have grandkids visiting and need to keep them busy, your household might be able to make a mutually beneficial deal with them.

The other "waste" that might be something you can help them with is space.
If they have lots of land, and they are away often, them upkeep will be an expensive proposition.
You and the kids could plant a field of dent corn or other long season crop.
As your trees and berrys mature , the cuttings could become source material for planting orchards on your neighbors land.
Aside from shared harvests, you will be increasing the food for the local deer.
Lawns could be a place for rabbit or chicken tractor.
Shawn of Edible Acres has done this kind of collaboration extensively.

This is good stuff, William. Thank you.

I am still collecting all of the neighbors' carboard boxes. It's been a little over a year now since I started the post.

I shred about half and keep the other half broken down. I am very selective of the boxes to keep and shred. There have been a few uses for the cardboard that I did not expect. A few of the many uses:

1-Areas that have been previously mulched with wood chips and started to have more weeds and grass coming up than usual. I rake the mulch back and layer down some of the broken down cardboard boxes.

2-Chicken/Quail brooder material. I mix the shredded cardboard in with some wood chips or shavings. Reduces my cost of brooding if I would otherwise have to buy shavings from the store.

3-Quail poop stink fighter. I keep some of our quail in suspended wire cages in the coop. Mostly the breeders/egg layers I am keeping. Since the cages are stacked, I have shallow trays to catch the poop. That stuff stinks! I add a thin layer of shredded cardboard into the tray each time I empty them and this has helped eliminate the stink.

I'd say that I have recovered the cost of the shredder from using the material for the brooder alone. I lubricate the shredder with olive oil and it has performed very well. I do have to trim the boxes to size but I do that while the kids feed the pieces through. It is amazing how quickly you can fill a 10 cubic foot wheelbarrow.

Other than that, we receive all of the stuff they are throwing away. We just take all they give us and end up finding uses for about half of it. My wife did draw the line with me using some toilet bowls and tanks as planters after one neighbor remodeled the inside of his house....

The last time I lived in town, on a small lot among many other small lots, I quickly became known as the one who wanted everyone's yard trash!  Especially firewood (we had a woodstove!), sticks and branches, and fallen leaves.  The sticks I would lay down in my trenched in garden paths, along with cardboard, leaves, grass, whatever, and then turn the bed over onto the adjacent path every few years, adding in compost if possible.  The leaves became a huge pile which would be dipped into whenever needed for mulching, and the oldest of them rubbed through a coarse screen to make soil amendment.

Multiple neighbors had trees taken down while I lived there as well....two or three dead ash due to emerald borers, and an overgrown silver maple.  The tree crews wanted to charge the neighbors extra to haul off the logs!  So I got them to leave the logs, and I would go and cut them up and roll them home (this was within 2 or 3 lots of mine).  One time the city was cutting an ash on the right of way, and a brief conversation led to the entire tree being dumped in my front yard for free!  The four years we lived there we only bought firewood one time, at the very beginning (and it was nasty green stuff....unlike the standing, dead, cured ash I started scrounging after that!