Today’s Contemplation: And Now For Something Completely Different

Monte Alban, Mexico. (1988) Photo by author.

Local Self-Sufficiency: Improving Soil Health Through Composting

One of the things I have been wanting to act upon for some time is a community-wide endeavour that pursues some aspect or another of self-sufficiency. I’ve not felt confident enough in my limited experience and learning to initiate anything up until now. Not that I am any kind of expert[1] in any of this but I felt that in addition to time being fleeting[2], some of the ‘awakenings’ around the recent impacts of government-imposed travel restrictions and fragility of supply chains has made others much more receptive to the idea of community resiliency.

In addition, I received a lot of positive feedback from neighbours following a recent community effort to challenge a relatively expansive building proposal in our environmentally-sensitive region of Ontario (it sits upon the Oak Ridges Moraine where many headwaters and aquifers for Ontario’s water exist). I was one of several people at our local council meeting to speak against the plan and suddenly many community members were aware of who I was and some of the things I stand for.

I finally felt, about two months or so ago, that it was an opportune time to bring much of my community on board with pursuing some self-sufficiency practices.

There are truly only three components necessary to achieve local self-sufficiency at the most basic of levels, procurement of: potable water, food, and regional shelter needs. If these basic necessities can be strengthened at the local level, then the community does not require the maintenance of complex, fragile, and energy-intensive supply chains except for non-necessities. With the increasing ability to feed itself the community could, in theory and hopefully, manage the transition to a post-carbon world with somewhat less chaos than it would otherwise.

I have chosen the pursuit of local food production as my focus for the foreseeable future. It is a ‘hobby’ I have been ‘cultivating’ for the past decade or so and am venturing into sharing my learnings within my local community and encouraging more widespread adoption of the practice amongst interested neighbours. I have initiated a ‘Food Gardening Guild’ and with 40+ people signed up in the first 48 hours within our smallish community; I am considering it a great start and have learned that a number of them are already pursuing personal food production to a limited extent.

This is just a first step, and it is less than ‘perfect’ — far less. It is not permaculture nor regenerative agriculture. It is the attempt to expand local food production knowledge and skills in a suburban-type neighbourhood just north of Toronto, Canada, where people depend greatly upon long-distance supply chains, fossil fuel-powered vehicles, and all the energy-intensive conveniences of complex industrial technologies. Arable soil is somewhat limited and what is available is under increasing threat of getting paved over as our ruling elite pursue the infinite growth chalice with all the fervour of foxes running amok in a chicken coop.

The following is the initial ‘aim’ of the group.

Sharing of information/knowledge/resources relevant to local food production, including (in no particular order of importance):

1. Improvement/maintenance of soil fertility;
2. Attraction/survival of beneficial species, especially pollinators;
3. Harvest storage (short-, medium-, long-term) and ‘trading’;
4. Best practices/successes and failures;
5. Seed saving/sharing;
6. Water collection/distribution;
7. Resource sharing (e.g, gardening tools, books, labour);
8. Composting strategies;
9. Companion plants;
10. Succession planting;
11. Recipes;
12. Compost Tea;
13. Raising Livestock (e.g., chickens);
14. Plant disease and avoidance strategies;
15. Hydroponic plant starting;
16. Awareness of self-sufficiency/-reliance importance to local community;
17. Permaculture/Regenerative Agriculture;
18. Natural pest deterrence.

Thought I would share my first general post to the ‘Guild’ to a broader audience in case there is anyone else who might find the information useful, and/or have feedback on improving/expanding upon the topic. Here it is:

Composting

A little something to think about as you prepare for the upcoming gardening season.

Soil health is one of the more important aspects for consideration when gardening.

Healthy soil will retain moisture, attract beneficial insects, help plants to avoid disease, and provide important nutrients to plants as they grow.

One of the most ‘natural’ ways to maintain soil health is through the constant addition of organic material.

Creating a compost from which partially- or fully-decayed organic material can be drawn from to add to your soil is a relatively inexpensive means of accomplishing this.

There are a variety of commercially-manufactured devices for composting kitchen/garden waste. The price range is quite large from simple, ‘inexpensive’ ones to much more complex and ‘expensive’. Self-made systems are also possible and can be as simple as piling yard waste in a specific area of your space and allowing nature to do its thing.

It’s taken us a number of years to find a system that seems to work best for us.

There are some important learnings we’ve stumbled upon in creating a system of composting that incorporates both food and yard waste. The most difficult aspect was finding a way to keep the neighbourhood racoons out — those rascally pests seemed to be able to penetrate whatever impediments were establish to keep them out of the fresh organic matter from our kitchen that was being added to our compost. No matter the confidence I felt in what I had just set up to keep them out, I was always humbled in the next few days.

Our current composting involves a rather large concrete block-based, two-bin system with a plywood cover. I am still experimenting with this approach, especially in terms of aeration to minimise the turning of the material given this is rather energy-intensive requirement and seems to get a bit more ‘taxing’ as the years go by (apparently I’m not getting any younger).

The system has two separate ‘bins’ so that material from one year can be moved to a second ‘bin’ to ‘mature’ for another year and fresh material can be added to the now empty side. Because we add waste meat products and horse manure from a friend’s farm, it is recommended that the compost age for at least two years before adding to the garden.

We have also learned to line the concrete blocks, that lay on their side to allow air into the material, with robust wire screening to keep the chipmunks from accessing the waste (they chewed through the mosquito screening originally tried).

Since aeration is necessary to allow the material to breakdown, this past summer I added PVC pipes with holes drilled in them laying across the compost material, supported by the concrete blocks on either side. This allows air to penetrate to the centre of the material — the matter will not decay properly if suffocated of fresh air.

The cover is a piece of 3/8” plywood cut in ½ with hinges to allow access to either side separately. There are, again for aeration and some water penetration, ¾” holes drilled in the top of the plywood.

One of my ‘discoveries’ this past year has been the use of mature compost in creating ‘compost tea’. I believe it has greatly enhanced the productivity of my plants. And its use would seem to negate the more intensive work of turning compost into the garden soil. By placing a burlap bag of mature compost into a rain barrel and allowing some days to pass, the nutrients from the compost become soluble and enter the water. I then fill watering cans from the rain barrel with this ‘tea’ and water my plants. This adds important nutrients directly to the soil for uptake by the plants. It’s actually a more efficient means than adding compost to the soil as the minerals are already in the soluble form that the plants require. However, solely using this tea does not contribute to enhancing the soil of other important elements to aid in moisture retention or insect attraction; so, mature compost should still be turned into your garden soil periodically.

For a more detailed look into composting, take a look at my detailed summary notes on The Rodale Book of Composting.

[1] I am not fond at all of the term ‘expert’. I have found many (most?) tend to develop their knowledge/skills within self-reinforcing echo chambers that result in them not knowing what they don’t know (hat tip to Nassim Taleb for that insight), which is often why ‘outsiders’ are frowned upon when they raise difficult questions/criticisms.

[2] Here I am reminded of this song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.