Lately, I’ve been trying to switch mental gears.
I no longer want to view my life from the consumer mindset, but rather as a steward. A steward is one who has been entrusted with something. It could be life itself, the earth (or at least a portion of it), resources, or finances, just to name a few. Whatever the thing is, the steward has been given a certain responsibility with it and is expected to properly oversee it adn utilize it in a wise way.
It seems that a common consumer attitude focusses on obtaining, using, discarding, and then repeating. This is often how I lived and treated things. Now, though, I try to make sure to get the most out of things by finding real uses for them.
I will illustrate how I am using this new mentality with the example of fishing.
Now 
I am also no stranger to filleting the fish and using them as an incredible food source. Before, though, that is about where it ended. Rather than purchasing fish like a consumer I would often opt for catching, cleaning, and cooking my own. Far too often though, the parts of the fish that I was not going to eat myself were just discarded.
Now, I am living a different life and taking a different path. I am in a different situation and live my life in a different environment. Since I am trying to raise more of my own animals and grow more of my own food, I have more opportunity to utilize things in beneficial ways. For the fish, here is what we get out of them now.
FUN
Yes, the exciting adventure of catching your own fish lives on. We do not just catch fish for sport, but we cannot deny the great time that we get to have when we are reeling in some fish.
EDUCATION
From practical life skills like baiting your own hook or learning how to cast a pole to understanding how to accurately identify different species, there is a lot that anyone can learn on a fishing trip. The 
FOOD
Yes, just like fun, food remains a great reason to fish. When you catch your own fresh fish from a trustworthy source, there is a certain feeling that you get which cannot be rivaled by purchasing a box of fish sticks.
FERTILIZER
Even in my old garden back in Wisconsin, I learned about the benefits that fish carcasses can provide when they are used as fertilizer. Often, our fish scraps will end up being buried under some sort of garden plant. I must warn you though, this may not work as well if you have a pet dog. It just may be that your dog will want the buried fish carcass and uproot the plant with it.
ANIMAL FEED
Oftentimes, people discard whatever parts of the fish that they are not eating. This includes the entrails, bones, and head. Some people will still use the heads and bones to make a broth or a soup base, which we do sometimes as well, but in a lost of cases these days, all of this is wasted. As long as there are no lead sinkers if hooks in the fish, there is no reason that they cannot be used as a food source for animals. Chickens really like to peck these sort of things, and our hogs made a quick meal of everything that we offered them. Why dump it in the garbage for no purpose when you can have your hogs turn it into bacon?
ANIMAL BAIT
Lately, there have been some larger raccoons eating local chicken flocks. One of our neighbors had their entire flock eaten. Raccoons can be hard to catch, but with a live trap and some fish carcasses for bait, I was able to begin trapping and relocating them. Many people would have just dumped the carcasses in the woods, which could have added to the predator problem, rather than helping to solve it.
CONCLUSION
It takes a little effort to find creative uses for things like this, but when you can get back from a fun family fishing and use every last bit of the fish, you know that you made the most out of it when your harvested them. Sometimes when little children are learning to fish, hooks can get caught deep in the throats of small fish that you would have otherwise let go. Rather than throwing the little dead fish back into the water like so many do, now we can use that too by fertilizing a plant, feeding a farm animal, or baiting a trap.
I'm not sure how many of you enjoy fishing for fun or fishing for food, but I enjoy it all the more when I can use the fish and their carcasses in these ways. Do any of you have a creative way that you've used what others often throw away? If so, why not make a comment, or even a post, about it?
As always, I'm and here's the proof:
proof-of-fish
Until next time…
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