Compost Pit

Stories.  That was and is the plan for my blog.  Stories about meeting the Other and finding a friend.  Stories about getting outside the comfort zone and finding out that it's OK outside.  Stories about the world being big enough for everybody and their hopes and dreams.

And today's story is about making stuff rotten.  That's right, today I started work on a new compost pit.  Here's the "before" picture:

And here's the "after" picture:

 

That's right, I didn't move much dirt today.  That's about two hours' work, which is about all I can do as I am getting up towards the seventh decade of life.  If I do this much each day, by the end of a month -- or maybe two months -- I'll have a deep, stone-lined compost pit and six months or so after that, I'll have compost to put on the garden and make my vegetables healthier and stronger.

That's the thing about all this simple living, back to nature, organic stuff:  it's hard work.  Labor intensive.  A long, slow slog.  Even when you are strong and in the prime of life you only accomplish a little bit of what needs to be done each day.  Even if you use machinery, farming is slow, slow work. Raised up in a modern, hurry-up environment, this is hard learning for me.  For a year now, I've been waiting on this project, trying to think of a faster way to do it.  If I had started right away, I'd already have it by now.

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" says God in Genesis, and I guess we've been spending most of the time since then trying to get around that requirement.  So I'm taking the time now to learn the soil, learn the movement of the body with a shovel full of dirt, learn the time line of plants and weather. And also to dream about the vegetables I'll get someday as a reward.

I'd just like to give a shout out to the Asian Rural Institute, where I learned how to dig and how to be patient with the soil.  I was a staff member when I was there, but it's a learning community and we all learned from each other staff and students together. It was a good place to be.