Black Gold

This was my breakthrough into organic farming.  While living in the city we had built a compost bin and then moved it with us when we came.  It was the starting point for us - from the dirt on up.  I have started and restarted this post about ten times now....not sure exactly why since it is quite possibly the best and most useful thing on the farm and one thing that I am constantly amazed by. But for whatever reason writing about it in any sort of understandable way is hard.  Most likely because it is entirely too simple.

Scraps of anything green and growing or dead and brown
Water
Air

Time

It's that simple. 

This is the recipe for dirt that Mother Earth has known for eons and we have since tried to make a science out of with no great success.  We make it entirely too complex.  You can spend a fortune buying organic compost at any garden store, or you can make it for free using all of the stuff that you throw out every day - the coffee grounds, the potato peelings, the apple cores, the old wilted flowers, the weeds that are the bane of every gardener's existence.  Just about everything that goes down the garbage disposal could be put to a better use as compost. 

Over the decades, since chemical farming came into vogue, scientists tried to figure out what the key ingredients were that plants needed to grow.  They came up with phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium as the three things that plants need to thrive and have since marketed it every possible way.  Nitrogen is the stuff that you see farmers carting around in the spring and spraying all over their fields and a mix of the three chemicals is what you will find in any bag of lawn fertilizer.  The thing they didn't realize is that even though they are supplying the three main ingredients, they are leaving out the micro ingredients that plants also need to survive. Micro nutrients are those small amounts of nutrients that plants (and animals) utilize to put the main nutrients to their best use.  We have slowly been depleting the soil of the micro nutrients for about 60 years now. 

It is similar to saying that all people really need to survive is fat, protein and carbohydrates without any thought at all to vitamins and minerals.  Without these micro nutrients none of the main nutrients get absorbed and utilized properly.  If you want an interesting and eye-opening breakdown of what I mean by all of this, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food is a good place to start or even just typing in the words - "whole food supplements" in any search bar is likely to get you some interesting reads.  We humans try to break everything down to it lowest form, we look for the exact chemical that is responsible for preventing scurvy or rickets, for instance, and once found (Vitamin C and Vitamin D) we take those chemicals in excess to help ward off these terrible diseases without really understanding how they work or what other smaller chemicals might be there to help the system along.   It is like putting only gasoline into a car without any understanding of what oil and antifreeze are there to do.  Whole foods - like a whole orange- has many chemicals in it and many chemical interactions that take place that we have absolutely no understanding of that make it the perfect packet of Vitamin C known and yet we take out the Vitamin C to put into tablets and throw the rest of the orange away.

The same thing has happened to our dirt over time.  We kept the Potassium, Nitrogen and Phosphorus and threw the rest of the beneficial stuff out with the trash.....literally.

Composting is perhaps one of the easiest things to do and one of the most beneficial.  It is the crux of sustainable farming - we pull nutrients, in the form of plants, out of the soil....we need to put nutrients back into the soil.  What better way to do this than to use the used up plants themselves?

Any, and I mean any vegetation or things that were previously vegetation are fair game for a compost pile.  The only rule that I stick to is that you can't put anything meat based in the pile - no meat scraps and no droppings from animals that have been eating meat.  The main reason behind this is that it sometimes takes on a bit of a foul odor and it can definitely start to attract the local vermin to the area.

You need to have a pile of some size to get the whole thing going.  3 square feet is generally considered to be about the right size.  You can hold it all together with a ring of woven wire, or a fancy compost bin....or you can just pile it up in a heap of at least 3 square feet and let it go.

Wet it down until it is about as wet as a well wrung out sponge.  In the early spring, or when it is dry in the middle of summer, I will add about 5 gallons to the pile periodically during a dry spell to keep it going.

Turn the pile every three weeks or so to allow air to mix with the pile and voila!  Dirt!

There are a few things that I have learned to do over the course of several years of producing the best black dirt imaginable. 

• The water is really important.  It may sound crazy to water your compost bin, but it definitely speeds up the breakdown process.  
•  A metal stake through the center of the pile will let you know if it is getting hot enough.  When a compost pile really gets going, the internal temperatures will be around 150 degrees and even weed seeds will get cooked beyond the pont where they will germinate.  My method, using the metal stake, is rather primitive but it works well.  I know that when I pull out the stake and it is too hot to touch, the pile is cooking. 
•  If your pile isn't taking off and getting hot - add dirt!  You will read that you need to go to the garden store and pick up bone meal or compost starter, blah, blah, blah.  Everything you need to get it going is already in the ground - all the enzymes, all the beneficial bugs, everything - just add a few shovelfuls to the mix and it will help to get it going.
• You don't need to mix it into the soil - this is what worms are for and they are good at it!  They will make short work of incorporating any compost that you put around flowers or vegetables into the soil.
• You know when it is done and ready to be used when you can no longer identify any of the stuff that you threw into it.  If you can identify a few things, simply take those out and throw them back on the pile for a little more time.

Over the winter, I let it sit and by spring the bottom stuff of the compost bin is gorgeous and ready to be spread around the flowers.  Then I add in leaves left over from the fall, grass clippings, vegetable scraps from the kitchen, coffee grounds and filters, egg shells and any weeds that have made an appearance in the garden.  Mix it all up and add water.  By the time the potatoes are peeking up in early spring I have another batch of the black gold to be spread around them.  And so it goes all summer long - using left overs to make more soil to make more vegetables which leads to more left overs.  Whole food nutrition for the garden- and not one chemical needed.

Happier Than A Pig In......Grass!

Next time you pass a confinement, see if you see any pigs doing this.......



This is a mound of grass that I dug out of my garden.  Pigs are the ultimate processors of grass, dirt, vegetable matter of all kinds.  They rut it apart, eat what can be eaten and simply enjoy the rest. This is what a pig was designed to do.  They weren't designed to live in closed confined buildings with no access to dirt and sunlight - it goes against the very grain of all that is pigness.

When pigs are born and raised in confinement they are typically given iron shots....know why? .....because they don't have access to dirt in a confinement and therefore are iron deficient and anemic.  But, by giving pigs access to dirt they are fine - no iron deficiency.  Pigs and dirt go hand in hand.

**in the background are any number of free range chickens, one crazy fun-loving grey cat named "Tink" and at one point, near the end, Hazel makes an appearance while chasing a chicken.

And So It Begins....

It's March....at last. We have finally reached that magic "6-8 weeks before the last frost" range. Time to start the spring planting.

Most traditional farmers won't be in their field yet until sometime in April or May. I never claimed to be traditional....I bring the dirt inside.

It is almost frightening how simple it is to grow things. A little seed, soil, water, sunshine and love and you have yourself meals for a year. So, on a sunny Sunday I pulled out of the cupboard all the seeds that I had saved for the year and sorted through them. There are the piles of seeds that need to be directly seeded in the ground when it warms up a bit, there are the seeds that are reserved for kids to plant, and then there are the wonderful can be started indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost plants.

I tracked down the trays that I use from year to year. These are approximately $10 at any hardware or garden store and, if you use them carefully, can be used year after year. I dumped out any and all remaining soil that was still clinging to the sides of the trays, rinsed them in dilute bleach solution to be sure there clean and virus free. We have found that cardboard egg cartons also work well and can be torn apart and planted directly in the dirt when the seeds are ready to transplant.

The trays are filled and the soil moistened with a little water to make planting easier. A bag of dirt can go a long way. I go for organic stuff if I can just as a standard of practice - less chemicals typically equals healthier foods. I tried my own compost once and that works as well- as long as you can recognize the seeds that will be emerging - typically compost will still harbor weed seeds that can take over, so I tend to stick with the bag of purchased dirt....one bag can start my entire garden and then some.

I survive the winter on the anticipation of playing in the dirt. It doesn't matter that it is still cold outside or that the dirt is in a bag - it is still dirt. I have found this small spring celebration to be quite an attraction and will have at least one kid that wanders by and says, "Oh! Can I help!" to which I somewhat reluctantly say, "Of course!" and hand over my seeds and my tweezers to them while I continue filling trays and labeling what they have planted.

A little warm water shower from the sink, a cover to keep them warm and moist, a sunny spot in the sun and voila! - three days later....the makings of coleslaw start poking up with onions, leeks, tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli to follow soon after.

My kids sometimes ask me about my perception of "God" and quite honestly, this is what I show them - the miracle of a seed - be it animal or vegetable. A small packet of genetic information that holds within it the blueprint to build another such being with similar, but not identical, characteristics. What I find so completely amazing is the complexity of the different species and how all of that is contained in something as small as (or in the case of animals - smaller than ) the head of a pin. That level of complexity and planning amazes me and the fact that I choose which seeds to plant and maintain gives me pause because now I, too, have a hand in what genetic information is propagated in the world. I take this responsibility very seriously. I see these tiny little seedlings not only as plants that I will one day eat, but they are the source of more seeds that I will rely on next year to plant again. They have lives and progeny and generations just like people do. They are very important beings in the world. Just because they don't have legs to move about and they eat soil doesn't mean that they are necessarily any less important than the rest of us. These thoughts often lead to me donating any extra seedlings to people to plant at their houses because I simply can't stand the thought of wasting even one.

So, it has begun. My family has grown to include these little seedlings that I will look after, care for, glean food from, and use to propagate next year's seeds. The Chinese know it best, "One who plants a garden, plants happiness. If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden."