Let The Spoiled Milk Give Back to Nature

    Maybe I am going crazy, going weird; my age is catching up with me. Or, perhaps I have always had my lid screwed on this oddly for all my life. Just a few things off the bat:

    1. I hate non-productive waste

    2. I do believe that we are trashing our planet in awful ways; we need to do better

    3. There are many, way too many food or organic items that find their way into my house (and others) that expire, spoil, and get dumped into our trash receptacles. It builds up and bothers me.

    Tonight I found myself with most of a gallon of milk that officially expired December 21. Today is New Year's Day, some ten days after that day. And, despite our hopes and fears, the milk had gone bad.

    I dumped it into my backyard. I poured the liquid, now somewhat rancid, into the grass, which leads to a pretty good drop off into more grassy areas, which leads to a tree line and a creek. We had a cold streak last week, but it got warm the last few days (50s and 60s in the darkest time of year), end of 2022. 

    

    How much is a gallon of milk, (only one percent) in these times of inflation and the Consumer Price Index (CPI)? Four dollars? No, apparently two fifty. Still, not used by us... Two and half dollars out the window. 

    But tonight, this first evening of the new year, 2023, I went past the back window, to the edge of deck, and now I have fed the microbes, the vegetation, the other bugs and insects, and the greater food chain with the life-giving source that is "bad" to human consumption, but should be helpful to the rest of the natural environment.

    And so now I wish to celebrate the spilt milk, instead of cry over it.

    Money spent, economic stimulus generated, ecology aided, minor crisis of my mind averted.

    Thanks to the farmers and all the supply chain people who made it to my house. It will not go into the sewer and plumbing system directly, but will filter through the bugs and earth. 

    Nature! Hurrah, outdoors! No organic waste! 

    I will celebrate the small victories. Milk is always helpful. No matter what the state of the microbes.

Stinky milk. I scared a missionary from West Point, Utah, with it. We are the canaries in the coal mine, at times.