The Original Green Material

The Original Green Material


In this day and age when the government, industry and environmentalists are calling for “Green Products” – they seem to forget there was a time when all products were Green. That time was not that long ago. If you are 59 years old (as I am) or have access to grandparents or Great-grandparents ask them what they did to live.

My father said as a boy they used horse manure, cow manure and chicken litter as fertilizer and picked the bugs off of garden plants by hand and dropped them in a coffee can of kerosene to kill them. Do the words “Organic Gardening” come to mind? The reason for this was they did not have money for commercial products that did the same job.

Travel was either by horse or walking - one provided the fertilizer and the other the health benefits that saw most of my Great-grandparents live to reach over 90 years of age. Heat was from wood and it was they who cut, split, stored the wood and kept the fires burning. Meat came from farm raised animals fed by some of the same farm raised crops they ate. Soap you made from animal fat and lye from the wood ashes left over from the heating and cooking fires. Medicine for the most part came from the wild plants that grew around the home and their use was handed down by word of mouth. Sweeteners came from fruit, molasses and honey. Before electricity - Water came from a well or spring and light came from oil lamps and candles. Have you seen anything yet that would not qualify as a “Green Product”?

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