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Keeping it Growing |
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Keeping it Growing: Our most valuable possessionsby Jesse Dutton Miller It's a funny world we live in where gold, a weak and relatively useless metal, is considered most valuable while we flush our shit away as fast as we can. The thing is that gold can't do much except look pretty, whereas shit, and other forms of dense organic matter, can heat our houses and fertilize our crops. That's why I'm telling you that dense organic matter is the most valuable thing in the world. (Yes, besides Love of course, greeners.) Shit is worth more than diamonds, but it's easy to ignore it because we're raised thinking that flushing it into rivers is the only way to deal with it. This winter I had the pleasure of spreading a cubic yard of fully-composted humanure (you know, human-manure) on the garden at Dancing Rocks Permaculture community in Tucson. This stuff was richer than any compost you can buy. There was no sign of what it used to be--no smell at all. I ran my hands through it greedily, wishing that I was as rich as those wise people. It's not very hard to set up a bucket collection system and then compost your shit, although if you do that in an incorporated town you'll probably be in violation of laws. Once upon a time people just left their shit under their outhouses, where it naturally composted, but in these modern days of overpopulation and fecal coliform water contamination, it's important to speed up the process by managing a compost pile in a manner that won't allow leakage into groundwater or rivers. A lot of us already know that composting food scraps is another great way to enrich our local economies. It just makes sense; when you take the nutrients off-site, you're depleting your soil. That's why a lot of us have been disappointed in the temporary closure of Evergreen's compost facility which continues at the time of this writing. Normally, our food scraps go through three heat treatments during composting and are then fed to red worms; the resulting worm shit is used to fertilize the farm and community gardens. But the worm bin broke, and we are waiting until it is fixed to begin composting again. Evergreen's compost facility currently functions under an exempt permit from the Thurston County department of health, which allows us to forgo the more rigerous testing than other municipal and commercial compost facilities undertake. It also requires that we use worms on all compost made from post-consumer scraps, which explains our current situation. We are currently exempt because we're a non-commercial, closed facility that composts using worms and does not collect food-scraps from off campus. When I came to visit Evergreen for the first time, our campus tour guide talked about our "state of the art," world-class compost facility. But that's not such an accurate description anymore. According to Melissa Barker, the farm manager, our compost facility is stretched to its capacity at the moment. There's more stuff out there we could be composting but don't have room for. It's time for Evergreen to decide how important composting is to us. If the students think that composting at Evergreen is a priority, it's time to build another, larger facility and get it permitted. Then we could increase the amount of composting that's happening on campus and incorporate all the leaves, woodchips, etc. generated by the dedicated grounds crew. But this would cost money and would involve hiring a new staff member to oversee compost; it would also mean finding a permanent source of funding for the compost project. Would you be willing to pay an extra $2 a quarter with your tuition to keep the compost cooking? Maybe so much time has passed since Evergreen started composting that most people around here don't remember how Evergreen's rather radical composting project got started. But Jonathan Pavley does. He recalls how students began collecting their food scraps in five-gallon buckets and dumping them in an abandoned lot near campus. Eventually the operation got big enough that the administration got word of it and said it would have to stop; students challenged them to make room for a solution on campus land, and the Evergreen composting project was born. Since then it has grown into its current form thanks to many dedicated student volunteers and minimum-wage workers, and support from Evergreen housing, facilities, and academics. If you're starting a garden this spring but haven't made any finished compost yet, there are options for buying some although you can't buy anything as good as what you can make at home. The farm will be allowed to sell compost and worm castings as soon as our soil tests are returned. Until then Black Lake Organic on Black Lake Boulevard just south of town is a great place that can supply all your gardening materials from seeds to soil. After a couple of slow seasons, they're having trouble staying in business; please support them because they're the best. Remember that where you choose to spend money shapes the world around us. Life is participation in compost. Happy fertilizing, and i'll talk to you next week. Don't forget to stop by the farm stand on red square Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 am to 5 pm (or whenever we sell out). It isn't exactly harvest season yet but we do have the best salad greens, tulips and eggs in town. Jesse Dutton Miller is a senior enrolled in the Practice of Sustainable Agriculture. He works at the campus childrens' center. Please send feedback to zapatilla@riseup.net.
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The Center for Ecological Learning and Living Evergreen Organic FarmLocation:2712 Lewis Rd, Olympia, WA 98505 Phone: (360) 867-6160 Organic Farm Manager: Melissa Barker Academic Faculty Contact: Martha Rosemeyer Farm Caretakers: Community Gardens Coordinator:
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