one of my goals on this trip is to learn how to help create healthy soils.
the organic matter is what i often think of when i imagine healthy topsoil. there is also the mineral part of it, whether it be in the form of sand, silt, or clay. there is usually some mix of the three. then there is the organic matter in soil, which consists of that living and not living. the living are organisms on the soil surface and below the surface that participate in the soil food web. that not living is the plant or animal material in various stages of decomposition that is the nutrient source for the living things.
in farming practice we have replaced a natural, soil-building ecosystem with a cropping system that we must manage in order to maintain or build soil. in agriculture the trend has been to deplete soils, but there may be some rare cases where soil fertility has been maintained or risen. what i am interested in finding out is if us humans can help to rebuild at an accelerated rate the soils which we have depleted. i think it may be possible through small-scale farming and intensive composting of all organic materials otherwise deposited in various waste streams. if it is possible this is what i want to participate in. i believe humanity depends on it.
at Green String Farm i took the opportunity to practice composting. i built one pile while there i felt was big enough to call complete. the minimum size in order to build the necessary heat in the pile for proper digestion is about four cubic feet. it can be bigger, but at some point it will have so much thermal mass that it will heat up more than is optimal for the desired bacterial activity.
joseph jenkins, author of the humanure handbook, does not believe turning compost is the best way to do it. he cites studies where turning compost was found to cause loss of oxygen, organic material, and water. it also requires labor that might be better utilized elsewhere. if the pile is properly built then the microbial life in the pile can be left to do it's magic over the course of a year after the pile has been built to full size.
before my time at Green String Farm i'd never completed a compost pile. closest i got was just a couple layers shy on a pile i started at wild's edge, where i used to live on orcas island. that one was in a bin made of pallets. this time i built the pile free-standing, using coarse, somewhat rigid materials to create structural support and a barrier against pests on the outside. i did not put these materials on top of the pile, but i see now that it could have been an extra deterrent against pests such as the cats and duck that liked to poke around up there. usually i just used finer material like leaves or straw. every other time i added nitrogenous materials and covered with carbonaceous materials, i also added a thin layer of soil. this seemed to discourage the animals. this is the way i saw the piles being layered at Ecology Action. those folks have some experience with composting.
for the last few weeks of the internship i added my own humanure to this compost pile. what encouraged me, besides the information in the 'humanure handbook', was that the pit under our outhouse had filled up and we were not prioritizing digging a new pit. i'd rather not go to the trouble when there is a perfectly relaxing and otherwise practical alternative, to compost the poop in a thermophilic pile! the 'humanure handbook', the only text i read while at the farm, helped me to feel confident in the safety and sensibility of this activity. there is more chance of pollution occurring from an anaerobic pit than there is from a properly built and maintained compost pile.
towards the end i also added two whole chicken corpses. this is another activity that mr. jenkins encourages in his book.
i took great care and enjoyed the creative act of building this pile. i felt with satisfaction how i was participating in this essential natural process of decomposition and digestion. without this process there would be no renewal and continuation of life.
