Over time, I gathered more than four tons of ferrous and non-ferrous metal scrap on the property and took it to recycling. There was an archaeological aspect to the process that was fascinating, and I ended up keeping (temporarily) some of the more interesting bits of detritus. A few found a home on top of the wood stove that warms the house each winter. I saved many more but wish I had photographed the endless variety. It was dominated by the banal: glass shards, nails, nuts& bolts, and bottle caps, but everything from friendship bracelets and toys to music cassettes to many random tools to 100-year-old broadsheets and canning jars showed up. I did reuse/repurpose anything that was reusable! The thirty-plus horseshoes found randomly around the entire property went, one to each visitor, a few to JR, and I kept two for posterity (again, temporary, I’m definitely not taking those to Iceland!).
I often mused what a metal-detector would show up, although the sheer quantity of objects and their wide distribution it would probably end up as an annoyance. And, in the end, who’s got time for this noise? Clearing out evidences of human occupation is truly an endless occupation. And one that, in this time, is use-less.