Pit Composting

Compost is about like anything else as an isolated subject.  It can be as simple as a stinky anaerobic mess in a pile, or as complicated and expensive as a mechanical device with aeration holes that spins on a timer.  Personally I've tended towards the former during my career as an aspiring green thumbist.  When I first started gardening in 2007, composting was the first piece of the gardening puzzle I gazed upon with Aspergian hyperfocus.  I read books written about composting and nothing else.  I studied composting...a process that occurs naturally, regardless of the books or the study on my part.  I made large piles of organic nitrogenous materials mixed with the more ubiquitous carbonaceous biomass, at the perfect ratio of 1/30...or 1/20...depending on your source, and I turned those piles with a pitchfork on a regular frequency.  I sprayed the piles with water to keep them at that perfect and mythical "wet as a wrung out sponge" dampness.  I even stuck pvc pipes with holes drilled in them down into the piles to increase oxygenation.  All of this effort was to achieve the perfect black gold to amend my intense garden beds with, and to do so as quickly as possible because that was the challenge.  For a while, I was composting kitchen scraps (and anything else of organic origin) with a sense of pride and achievement.  After I tackled the art of making perfect compost, my gaze was focused elsewhere in the gardening world, and I began my decent back towards anaerobic piles covered up with enough biomass to stunt the stinch. 

After reading Gaia's Garden, I was convinced that the compost pile was a waste of effort for myself.  You have to pile the kitchen scraps up somewhere, at a bare minimum, to create compost.  Then you have to apply that compost somewhere, at least for it to be of some use to you.  Last season I dumped a five gallon bucket full of kitchen scraps into a simple compost bin, and covered it up with straw or mulch or weeds, and repeated all season long.  I probably dumped 20 buckets onto a heap that stayed at about 3 feet in diameter and about 3 feet tall...all year.  The compost was literally being eaten by the soil life, and I imagine it became so rich in that place that nutrients began leaching into the sub soil, into the water table, and away.  While this situation is certainly better than sending all of that biomass to the landfill, it wasn't much of a yield for me.  I ended up with one wheel barrow load of compost that I applied to one bed.  All of that effort just for one garden beds worth of amendments.  Granted, any chance to participate in any kind of garden alchemy, I'm game, but this seemed too...inefficient for my liking.  I've since converted from composting in piles above ground, to pit composting. 

Pit composting is an idea I can get behind.  It's simple, effective, and it minimizes work on my part which frees me up for other things (like telling my son no, and stop that, and put your wiener up).  It certainly isn't a method for everyone.  Dig the hole deep enough, and cover it up, and even dogs will leave the mess alone.  You can literally compost anything you want (pending it's actually compostable in the first place).  You won't have to concern yourself with nitrogen/carbon ratios, moisture, or oxygen content.  No turning of a pile, no checking of temperatures with compost thermometers, no worrying about a pile bursting into flames, no worrying about unwanted volunteers sprouting up, no concern for attracting varmints, and no obnoxious smells to piss the neighbors off. 

Dig a hole

Dump 5 gallon bucket full of kitchen scraps in hole

 

here you can see that I dug the hole on the down hill side of a berm

 

 

Allow local feral fauna to inspect and taste kitchen scrap slop, to determine it's of no interest

 

 

 

Fill hole back in

 

 

Enjoy couch meditation in front of the idiot panel with your children, secure in the knowledge that you are saving kitchen scrap from the landfill, and increasing the fertility of your land by enlisting thousands of different life forms beneath ground to do your work for you.  If you listen closely, you can hear the earth worms thank you.

 

Earth Moving

I've got a lot of opinions about the world.  Opinions about what is real and what is propaganda in service of the Matrix.  Opinions about spiritual matters and meaning, about the best way to raise children, how a hole is best dug and what a good beer should taste like.  Opinions are like assholes in this world full of them.  So, due to my particularly cranky, old jaded man like attitude towards the state of affairs in the world, I've decided to just start being the change as an MO.  So expect more pictures and videos in the future...and probably less opinion about the world.  Less social criticism...more doing as William Hunter Duncan has recently propounded. 

So I dug that swale out and then it rained.

I know I sound like an idiot, but I can assure you that I am no idiot.  When I moved to this property in February of 2012, all that you see in the above two videos, at least in the fenced in section, was nothing more than bermuda grass, dandelions, and wild garlic that was all cut on the lowest setting with a riding lawn mower.  I have grown lots of food, and I have imported loooooots of free biomass.  The system is maturing all around.  I'm growing soil and capturing rain water and sun energy.  It's beautiful.

I'd say, outside of being here everyday for my family, the best part about dropping out of the Matrix is the ability to live my life how it is supposed to be lived.  My wife told me the other day that she had read a blog written by a hospice nurse about the most common regrets that patients on their death beds have.  The most common was regret for not having the courage to live their lives on their own terms, and not due to the worlds social and programmed expectations.  That is what I'm doing.  I'm living my life based on my moral north, my bliss, doing what I'm meant to do.  My wife and I are fulfilling our purposes together, with children, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever participated in. 

I ask you, dear reader, what is an hour of your life worth in dollar figures?  Not just one hour, but an endless precession of hours, until they end that is, upon your death.  What is that hour, just before you die, worth?  Personally I am incapable of putting a dollar amount on even my last second, much less hour.  This is where you must put meaning into perspective.  I've met the reaper in person, up close and personal.  I know his inevitability, and the hubris created between his inevitability and our pride and selfishness.  The irony is that the most selfless thing you could possibly do is to undergo your own self actualization.  Because it's true that you cannot possibly expect to be loved if you can't even love yourself.

I believe the job that we all must do, for the world, for our children, and for ourselves, is to fulfill our purposes.  Not to blindly follow the programming that tells us that a job is the highest good.  Make your own damn job, and that job is to do what you are called to do, and not what you are paid to do.  The money will come, as if by magic, and you might find that the Stones were right, you'll get what you need.  Do not be afraid to live your life for your highest purpose.  After all, there is a high probability...if you live your life on the terms of others, that you will regret it on your death bed.