Acknowledging nature's wisdom is key in just about anything--especially gardening. Nature is the original and best recycler. Where do all those fall leaves go? Shed animal antlers and winter coats? Spawned salmon carcasses? They all get recycled into the system. Nutrient cycling is amazing and ever-present, even in urban settings. Think of all the rotting pine needles in your gutter that support a growth of moss and tiny hemlock trees. An alder rooting through the asphalt, an algal bloom in a shallow pond, the greenest grass above your sewer. Just about every living thing eats and produces waste, and in the beauty of nature one thing's waste is another thing's food. Without the waste there is no food. Acknowledging that waste is a necessary and valuable part of the nutrient cycle is key in gardening.
You can't constantly take away from the nutrient cycle without adding to it. If I harvest nutrient-laden produce year after year in my garden, will I always have nutritious produce or any produce at all? Nutrients have to come from somewhere. As they are extracted from the soil in the form of food, their availability in my garden decreases. Something's got to give--I need to add fertilizer or buy all my food. Buy fertilizer or buy food? Most people will see that buying food is cheaper and easier than buying commercial fertilizer and proceed from there. Here's where tapping into the wisdom of nature will lead you to find free fertilizer to make almost-free food.
The thing that excites me so much about composting is that it literally transports nutrients for free. We all eat and have food scraps. Those scraps contain nutrients from their native soil--whether it be from the mountainside, the sea, or the agricultural lands of the Americas....or elsewhere. By composting we extract nutrients from foreign soil and put it into our own. In a place where soil is scarce, this is a dream come true!
Nature has a cycle for producing that involves the changing of forms. We all know the basic buffalo scenario of yesteryear--they ate the grass, pooped on the grass, and the prairie was fertile and bountiful. The buffalo always had food because they always gave the prairie food. By globalizing our diets we've severely altered this cycle. We take nutrients from a Midwestern corn field and throw them into the landfill via a cob. We take nutrients from Ecuador and throw them into the landfill in the form of peels. We excrete nutrients into "waste water" facilities and into the ocean. It goes on and on--all this "throwing away" of soil-building materials--every minute, every day, and what we have to show for it is the growing mountain of Lemon Creek, our local landfill. I prefer plate tectonics for my mountain builder.
Eating locally isn't enough to call our food production sustainable. Soils have to be fertilized, and as long as that fertilizer comes in a box or bag from somewhere else we're still dependent on a global diet. I had a goat dairy for 8 months, and while the milk and yogurt were phenomenally delicious, all I was doing was a trade. Instead of buying milk I was buying alfalfa. And to top it off, I wasn't saving any money or cutting out any shipping transportation, and I was certainly eating up a lot of my time. I accepted the fact that I don't live in a place where a dairy makes sense economically or sustainably. I'd rather buy milk from a place where cows eat grass and poop on it and spend my time catching a fish. At least that way I can throw the fish head overboard and feed a crab that might find it's way into my pot.
You can't constantly take away from the nutrient cycle without adding to it. If I harvest nutrient-laden produce year after year in my garden, will I always have nutritious produce or any produce at all? Nutrients have to come from somewhere. As they are extracted from the soil in the form of food, their availability in my garden decreases. Something's got to give--I need to add fertilizer or buy all my food. Buy fertilizer or buy food? Most people will see that buying food is cheaper and easier than buying commercial fertilizer and proceed from there. Here's where tapping into the wisdom of nature will lead you to find free fertilizer to make almost-free food.
The thing that excites me so much about composting is that it literally transports nutrients for free. We all eat and have food scraps. Those scraps contain nutrients from their native soil--whether it be from the mountainside, the sea, or the agricultural lands of the Americas....or elsewhere. By composting we extract nutrients from foreign soil and put it into our own. In a place where soil is scarce, this is a dream come true!
Nature has a cycle for producing that involves the changing of forms. We all know the basic buffalo scenario of yesteryear--they ate the grass, pooped on the grass, and the prairie was fertile and bountiful. The buffalo always had food because they always gave the prairie food. By globalizing our diets we've severely altered this cycle. We take nutrients from a Midwestern corn field and throw them into the landfill via a cob. We take nutrients from Ecuador and throw them into the landfill in the form of peels. We excrete nutrients into "waste water" facilities and into the ocean. It goes on and on--all this "throwing away" of soil-building materials--every minute, every day, and what we have to show for it is the growing mountain of Lemon Creek, our local landfill. I prefer plate tectonics for my mountain builder.
Eating locally isn't enough to call our food production sustainable. Soils have to be fertilized, and as long as that fertilizer comes in a box or bag from somewhere else we're still dependent on a global diet. I had a goat dairy for 8 months, and while the milk and yogurt were phenomenally delicious, all I was doing was a trade. Instead of buying milk I was buying alfalfa. And to top it off, I wasn't saving any money or cutting out any shipping transportation, and I was certainly eating up a lot of my time. I accepted the fact that I don't live in a place where a dairy makes sense economically or sustainably. I'd rather buy milk from a place where cows eat grass and poop on it and spend my time catching a fish. At least that way I can throw the fish head overboard and feed a crab that might find it's way into my pot.
(Huck was super-stoked on his new skiing helmet
and wanted to wear it fishing.....)
