Homesteading

Greetings Living Earth Gardeners!

Last time we presented to you our Secondary Support Systems and discussed the use of electricity and fossil fuels within a paradigm of Deep Sustainability. There is still one topic, or theme, that I will present to you before we move into our Primary Design Elements. the core of our work here at Living Earth Garden Project. This topic/theme is Homesteading.

I have found that a good dictionary, showing the historical roots and old usages of words, can shed light on the essence that those words were originally intended to convey. 'Homestead' is a compound word of two parts, 'Home' we all know the meaning of and it's essence has not changed significantly over the centuries. 'Stead', according to Websters, is akin to the older word "Standon", which is old English for 'to stand'. The word, 'stead' also implies 'place', so Home Stead leads to Home Place, as well as Home Stand. To be 'Stead Fast' can mean 'to be fixed firmly in place'. 'Stead' also leads us to the word 'steady' which is 'to be direct or certain in movement'. All this dictionary work helps to form a picture of what Home Steading is in general and what it requires from us in particular. I have come to think of Home Steading as Home Standing, that is, growing and building a Home Place whree we can Stand Strongly, with Steady purpose and direction.

There are a number of factors working against Standing Strongly in our Home Place in the modern world. A primary one is the cost of property ownership, that is, land with or without a house already built upon it. High cost, by itself, leaves many people renting their Home Places. However, even when renters follow the rules of their landlords and pay their rent on time, they remain subject to having their lease left unrenewed upon expiration, having to start over, finding and creating a new home somewhere else. When people are able to purchase the property needed to create their own home, it is often with the burden of a mortgage. Although they are called 'homeowners', those with mortgages, are actually leasing to own from their lending financial institutions. Opening up that dictionary again, we find that 'MortGage' is a combination of 'mort', meaning 'death' (as in mortuary), and 'gage', an old form of 'pledge'. So, to take on a 'mortgage' can be understood as making a 'Death Pledge', and obligation that will be met just before one dies, or one in which the mortgager dies in the course of trying to meet its' conditions. Having a financial institution hold interest in a piece of property can also lead to an overemphasis on 'property value'. Constant thinking about 'potential resale value' undermines peoples' ability to create a true Home for themselves. Finally, property taxes can form another barrier and burden to Home Steading, especially when rates are allowed to be raised at the whim of county officials.

I will offer two examples of Home Steading as I have defined it, people standing strongly in their Home Place with Steady purpose and direction. Both examples are actually communities and that may be a lesson for us. Seems to be that it is more difficult to Stand Strongly as an individual, or even as a nuclear family unit, than as an intentional community (one with a common purpose), or an extended family clan, as once was the tradition. Common Stead, or Community Home Stead, may actually be a better term to describe these places, and a better long-term goal for us aspiring Home Steaders.

The first positive example of people Standing Strongly in their Home Place is that of the Old Order Amish. I have mentioned this group before and I believe many of you are already familiar with them. What I will add about the Amish to what I have already stated before, is that they clearly have very strong convictions that they all share together. Whether or not we are on the outside sharing those same convictions is less important than us seeing the power of common vision to hold a community together. In my past studies of Amish ways, I learned that the primary reason that they do not bring electricity into their houses, even though an available grid is often nearby, is because they do not want to be 'connected' to the outside world. What I find most interesting about Amish practices, is that despite going clearly against all modern ideas of what it takes to be 'successful', they are one of the only farming people today who are actually succeeding economically. The Amish are doing so well following their own traditional guidelines, that they are expanding their Home Places and buying with cash, in full, the properties of adjacent farmers, non-Amish farmers who have failed financially following conventional modern guidelines.

The second example of a People Standing Strongly in their Home Place is that of the Ancient Pueblos of New Mexico. I will focus on the one closest to our own family home here in Taos, the Taos Pueblo. People began settling here and creating a Home Place for themselves around 1000 years ago, making Taos Pueblo one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in all of North America. Life today at this Pueblo appears to be very similar to how it may have been at the beginning. Similar to the Amish, and perhaps even stricter, Taos Pueblo has accepted very few modern innovations within its' old walls: clear glass for windows, kerosene for task lighting, propane for some of the cooking, occasionally a car is allowed access to the plaza. Water is still drawn directly from Red Willow Creek, which flows down from their sacred Blue Lake. Space-heating is done primarily through the burning of pinon (pinyon) and juniper firewood taken from their own Forest. Bread continues to be baked in hornos, round wood-fired ovens located just outside either of the two apartment complexes. Perhaps most importantly, the ancient rituals and religious practices continue. Dances and feast days are scheduled throughout most of the year and religious service in underground 'kiva' chambers is still required of all men. Taos Pueblo has shown an extraordinary sense of steady conviction and purpose in keeping to their old ways, despite strong, sometimes hostile, pressure from the outside world to change.

With best wishes for Strength and Steady Endurance in your own Home Places,
Gardener Machei
Living Earth Garden Project
Taos, NM

Electricity and Fossil Fuels

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners!

We have now presented to you all four of the Secondary Design Elements/Support Systems at Living Earth Garden Project. Before we move into our Primary Design Elements, and the core of our work here. I will bring up one more set of Support Systems, This set could be called our Tertiary Design Elements or Secondary Support Systems. They are less central to the goals of our project, but yet essential for our daily living at present.

I have chosen to describe, or perhaps 'reveal', our Support Systems before presenting the core of our work, in order to show the paradigm that we are working out of, and actually materializing. One reason I use the term "Deep Sustainability" is to separate our project from those that are simply 'Green Washing' . By 'Green Washing', I mean projects that appear to be following Sustainability Principles on the surface, yet with closer examination, one finds excessive use of energy, either through the use of physical power or embodied in the types of materials used. Other times, a large volume of something is brought from somewhere else, helping the site look 'sustainable', but giving no regard to what is happening to the land that these material inputs are being taken from.

Last Summer, we had an AirBnB Guest, who on the morning after a night in our Big Tipi, looked around, and said to me, something similar to, "Wow! You are completely sustainable here, aren't you?" I responded, "Well, we still use propane." He replied, "Alright, 90% then?" I said, "Ok".

In truth, it is difficult to give sustainability a percentage or a rating. Sustainability level is always relative to the far-sightedness of the ranker and their field of comparison. The concept of "Footprint" is somewhat more objective. By calculating our Footprint, an attempt is made to describe numerically how much land is being used to provide for our energy and material uses. Our local college teacher commented that our Foot print here at Living Earth Garden Project is approximately 1/50th of that of the average family living within the United States.

We do use propane in our kitchen, for both cooking and space heating. It is a small space (~250 square feet), so does not require much input. Although use varies widely depending on season and activities, on average our use is about one small canister, or 5 gallons of propane per week for both needs. No amount of fossil fuel use is sustainable in the long run, and we look forward to reducing the small amount that we do currently use.

In our primary living space (of ~ 700 square feet), where we rest and sleep, we have put in a large wood stove and heat only with firewood (to supplement the significant amount of solar heat captured through our south-facing glass windows). Currently, the burning of firewood for home heating is desirable. Due to the suppression of both natural lightning-caused fires as well as the traditional cultural practice of Indian Burning, both of which thinned trees to healthy numbers, forests throughout North America have become overgrown and contain dangerous amounts of dead wood that act as kindling for large uncontrolled wildfires  that cause great damage. Thinning these forests and converting weak  unhealthy growth into firewood is currently good for both People and Forests. Looking into the future, however, it is unlikely that our Forests could support the current heating demands of our entire population, once fossil fuels are depleted, and that should be kept in mind when designing and building  long term permanent dwellings.

Now, onto electricity. Here in the 'Four Corners' Region (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado), most on-grid electricity is generated through the burning of coal on Navajo Land. Very unsustainable and very unhealthy, in particular to the Navajo. Most conventional builders require unlimited on-demand electricity on-site before beginning a job. We went into our Project with a curiosity of how much could we do without electricity? and how much could we do without using fossil fuels in general?

So far, we have found that it is convenient, and sometimes necessary, to have a fully-charged power drill on hand as back-up when driving screws become too difficult. Yet, for most tasks, a ratcheting screwdriver remains my tool of choice. It is light, easy to maneuver, doesn't make a lot of noise, and surprisingly fast when ratcheting. Other times, we have used the power drill for drilling holes. Yet, usually, our hand drills and braces are up to the task. When they are not, it is due to the poor quality with which they are commonly made now. Once we obtain a well-made hand drill and hand brace, with a full set of old style square bits to choose from, we think we will be able to rely on them fully for hole drilling.

Of course, it took quite a bit of fossil fuel energy to drill our well (the one job that we have hired out for), and we are not considering yet all the energy required to deliver materials to our site. Yet, outside these exceptions, everything else that we have done on our land has been with human-powered hand tools, such as hammers, planes and rasps, spades, shovels and forks, or just our own bare hands and bodies.

After 3-4 years without any on-site electrical generation, we purchased and installed ourselves the components for a simple, modest solar electric system. The solar panel generates up to 125 watts per hour and the auto glass mat battery stores 1200 amphours of energy. We use it to regularly charge that power drill, as well as compact fluorescent lights in our kitchen, rechargeable batteries that go into portable lamps, and small low-energy gadgets such as cell phones. Sometimes we also use this solar system to charge laptop computers and tablets, but this use depends on our having the usual high desert sunny day, and when we don't, these higher energy uses need to wait.

I would like to share one experience that happened during our early years without electricity. The background understanding comes from the Amish. In my studies, I learned that the Amish actually have a fairly liberal approach to innovation. When a community member brings forth a new idea to the elders, they usually allow it a 'test run'. After this examination period, the Amish ask, 'Does this new tool or gadget strengthen our community, or weaken it?' Through this process, most new things are eliminated.

We were finishing up the building of our Yurt deck, adding on a porch by securing 2x4 floor boards to 4x8 cantilevered beams with 3" screws. Everything on the Deck, up to that point, was secured by nails or bolts and done with hand tools. These 3" deck screws were too long and the white fir beams too hard for me to drive them all in all the way by hand, even with my trusty ratcheting screwdriver. We had been loaned an old power drill with weak batteries and a charger. Out of necessity, I would charge them off our car battery. I could not, however, keep these weak drill batteries charged up enough to drive in all the screws all the way either, and so I tried many different combinations of driving in by hand and electricity to help the charge that I did have go farther.

Of all the different variations on driving in these 3" screws, the best and most enjoyable one was found on the day that I had help from both Nyna and our eldest daughter, Madrone. Madrone would get each screw started in its hole that I had predrilled. Then, Nyna would drive it in as far as as she could. Finally, I would finish each screw off by driving it in the rest of the way. This was not too difficult for any one of us, and we all enjoyed working together. As we advanced our way down each porch board, I thought, 'this is what the Amish know, and this is the feeling of family and community that they hold onto so dearly'.

With Best wishes for families and communities,
Gardener Machei
 Taos, New Mexico

Solar Showers!

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners!!

Thanks for bearing with us through some very long blog posts concerning composting, all leading up to last week's heavy topic of Humanure Composting. Now, with that done, we can move on to the fairly light topic of Solar Showers.

Solar showers will be a quick topic because, to be honest, we haven't made much progress on this design element. The Town of Taos operates a recreational facility, called the Youth and Family Center, that offers hot showers for $1 per entry with a pass. Our land is around 2 miles from this facility, so it has been convenient for us to use the public facility and put off developing our own.

We do have some Solar Showering experience to share, however, but before we get into those, let me remind you all that private baths at every residence is a fairly recent and modern phenomenon. Traditionally people did use public baths to get clean, relax and visit with their neighbors. Here, around Taos there are also a number of hot springs, on Public Land with free access, that continue to serve this purpose. One of the biggest obstacles to Deep Sustainability is the conventional notion that every individual needs to own privately, every available consumer good for themselves. This kind of thinking feeds the Corporations, whose profits increase with the breakdown of our families and communities.

Turning back to Solar Showering, our first attempt came our very first Summer, when we simply purchased a "shower tent" from a camping outfitter. The tent arrived with a 5 gallon shower bag and a hook to hang it from. This set-up was actually one of our most workable ones. The design was well thought out, so that water pressure was good, right over our heads, and with reliably consistent sunlight here, almost anyways warm. I was even taking warm showers into the Fall on cool mornings well after the first frosts had arrived!

The problem with this shower tent idea was that the intense sunlight and strong winds, common to Taos, shredded the nylon fabric by the middle of Fall. We saw clearly that this approach was not sustainable. I hauled many trash bags to the landfill full of debris from that first Summer camp.

Our second attempt at a Solar Shower came with an eye towards something more permanent. We designed and built a semicircular/half moon space, enclosed by a curved straw bale wall with an opening on the straight side for entry. Our colleague, who had experience with plumbing, offered to design the shower parts for us. We agreed and he put together a system which included a large black container for water with a long hose and low-flow shower head at the end. Together we built a platform for the water container to rest on. as well as a small foot deck for us to stand on while showering. We also poured enough pea gravel on the ground within this enclosed half-moon space to raise the floor 3 - 4 inches.

This second Solar Shower never functioned so well. The water flow was very low and took much longer to warm up in the large container than water did in the smaller solar bags. We used it occasionally, for a quick rinse off, when there was not time for a trip to the public showers.

Our colleague confided to me that everything he had learned about plumbing was based on the assumption of pressurized water (either from a pressure tank in the house, or inherent in a municipal system), so he was really not sure how to base his design with gravity being the only force acting on the water. This kind of occurrence has happened to us more than once now, as the people that we think will have quick easy answers actually don't know what to say, or unintentionally give us misleading information, because we are working from a different set of assumptions than they are. As mentioned in earlier blog posts, our assumptions are based on values of Deep Sustainability and Radical Simplicity. Nearly everything that builders today have learned in their trades is based on the assumptions of wasteful conventional systems. Which brings us to our most important point for this week:

When beginning your own land-based project, be cautious of the advice of the experts. Always reflect on the paradigm that they are thinking out of, and check how closely it fits with your own set of assumptions and values. While experienced builders can be very valuable in explaining how to do specific tasks, expect yourselves to remain solely responsible for keeping the work within your own big-picture design and vision, if you are creating something outside of the conventional mainstream.

Last Summer we had an opportunity to work on our Solar Shower again. Seeing the need for our Project to begin earning some income, we began taking guests, through AirBNB, in our Big Tipi. We had promised the availability of a Solar Shower. By this time, the old second shower had fallen into complete disuse, and we had taken away straw bales as we needed them for other purposes. Starting again, with essentially only the pea gravel floor, in that half moon/semi-circle space, we purchased 3 straight red cedar poles, each 12' long, from our local lumber mill. We sanded, sealed and tied them together near their tops with a clove hitch knot, spread out their bases to form a tripod very similar to that formed in tipis as their "foundation", onto which the other poles rest.

Next, we compromised and purchased a 'shower stall' from a camping outfitter, and hung it from a clove hitch, with a solar shower bag once again. This shower functions well, similar to that first Summer with the 'shower tent', only now somewhat more permanent with those red cedar poles. The nylon shower stall did survive last Summer without any major tears, but we don't expect it to last longer than the other Summer. This time, however, we have some ideas already of what to do when it does begin to rip apart...

Please do send us your questions and comments!

With best wishes for warm showers,
Gardener Machei
Taos, NM  

Humanure Composting

Greetings Living Earth Gardeners!
Nyna and I apologize for falling behind on our one blog post entry per week schedule. I have often found the need to make an entry twice as long as originally intended, in order to present all the ideas necessary to make the blog post complete and thorough. I have done my best to avoid giving only enough information 'to make you dangerous'. There may be no more important homestead task to have thorough and complete understanding of than Humanure Composting. The last 3 blog posts have been leading  up to this one...Please review the following Blogs: Blog #6 : Sawdust Bucket Composting - Dec 2, 2015 , Blog #7 : Principles of Composting - Dec 9, 2015 and Blog #8 : Composting In Practice - Dec 23, 2015. If you have not read all these past entries, please give them a thorough read before moving forward. I will be assuming familiarity with the ideas presented there.

Humanure Composting follows all the general composting principles presented earlier (Principles of Composting, Wed. Dec. 9th). Humanure can be considered a Fire element in the alchemical framework. Our urine is a very strong Fire substance, in that it contains a very high percentage of nitrogen and other nutrients. Our feces are a weaker Fire substance, in that they contain some amount of organic matter, which relates to the amount  of fiber in our diet. This organic matter acts as a Rock (Earth) substance, damping down the Fire brought on by the nutrients our bodies are eliminating. Further dampening is brought on by the sawdust that we use to cover our humanure deposits (Blog #6). Sawdust is a very strong Rock element, having a very high carbon to nitrogen ratio. The proportion of Fire (nitrogen) to Rock (carbon) in any particular bucket of humanure is directly related to the odor it emanates. The more sawdust used to cover urine and/or feces, the more nitrogen is absorbed by the carbon in the sawdust, and the less odor will emanate. Although we generally add one cupful of sawdust to each deposit (and 4 cupfuls at the base of each bucket), whether urine or feces, in practice, urine often requires twice as much sawdust to eliminate (or significantly reduce) its odor than feces do. There is not a strictly right or wrong approach to sawdust covering, you may use more or less than one cupful as your sense of smell requires. It is important, however, to be aware of how much sawdust (Rock) we are using, for the more sawdust used at this bucket stage, will generally transfer to less loose straw (or other carbonaceous material) being needed at the pile building stage.

As mentioned in earlier blog post, we generally follow the procedures set forth by Joseph Jenkins, in his book, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide To Composting Human Manure. As far as beginning a pile is concerned, Jenkins' method is similar to our procedure for regular composting ( Blog #8). However, due to high groundwater on our land, we take extra precautions to ensure that our humanure never comes in contact with our soil. The first precaution that we take is to build all our humanure piles up on pallets. Not only do pallets raise the piles up off the ground, but they create an Air space between the piles and the ground which further ensures that no pathogens will come in contact with our soil. The second precaution we take is to lay down a base of straw bales, on top of the pallets, for each pile. We put down 8 straw bales to form a 4 1/2' x 4 1/2' square with loose straw stuffed tightly into the spaces between bales. These bales ensure that no liquids will leach down onto our ground by absorbing them, and over time, becoming part of the finished compost.

Once the base of the humanure pile is set, we begin raising the walls, one tier at a time, again with straw bales to fully contain the materials we will place inside. Building straw bale walls on the edge of this 4 1/2' x 4 1/2' square, generally produces a 3' x 3' composting area inside (assuming standard straw bale size of 3' length x 1 1/2' width x 1' height). If we have any cardboard, paper, or fabrics to compost, they go down first, where they help with absorption and where they will break down best. Next, we empty the humanure buckets, poo and pee, both of which have been closed tightly with lids. If we have any wood ashes from our woodstove, we spread these over the humanure. Then we add all of the food scraps and other decomposing 'waste', that our kitchen has generated over this same period of time (and also kept stored in closed buckets). Usually, these food scraps generate a much stronger offensive odor than the humanure. Finally, we cover everything with a thick (3" - 6") layer of loose straw. Similarly to sawdust, the more loose straw that is applied, the less odor will emanate from the pile. In general, our humanure piles only release a mild, musky odor (that does not smell much like feces or urine) in the week following the building of compost, and only during the hottest months of Summer. If we did find this musky smell disagreeable, we would add more loose straw.

We then wash our humanure buckets with a mixture of soap, water, bacterial cleaner and 1 Tablespoon hydrogen peroxide. We clean these buckets as we would a flush toilet. The water used for washing gets poured over the compost pile and another thinner layer (2" - 3") of loose straw is spread over that. This now very thick layer (6" - 9") of loose straw covers our food scraps, wood ashes (if any) and humanure deposits, until the next months, when it becomes the base for the next tier of materials. We continue in this manner until we have reached a height of 3', forming a final cubic volume of 3' x 3' x 3', which is equal to 27 cubic feet or one cubic yard. A second very thick ( 6" - 9" ) layer of loose straw is spread on the very top of the pile when we have reached our final height and are ready to let the pile sit.

When we do smell that musky odor, or see steam rising up on a cold morning, we know that our compost pile is active, that the microbes are digesting all the materials we have given them to eat. This is what makes humanure composting such an effective method for eliminating waste. Within that first week of heating up, everything that we have put in is being transformed into something else by the beneficial microbial life in the pile. After a month of composting, it is already difficult to recognize the original materials put in. After one year, it has become something completely different.

Having read our past blog posts, you are familiar with my criticisms of municipal sewage systems. Up until now, I have avoided the topic of rural septic systems. Rural septic systems are not as wasteful as municipal systems, in that the water flushed and nutrients contained in the humanure are generally kept on site, and so, remain available for plant growth on that homestead. Yet, the primary goal of septic systems is similar to that of municipal systems: to move our crap out of our view, and out of our thinking. The septic tank and adjoining leachfield do not transform our humanure with anywhere close to the efficiency of composting. All septic systems, sooner or later, fail, and when they do fail, a costly service, that cannot be put off, is then required to get the septic functioning again.

In addition, to a much lower  level of efficiency, rural septic systems are also much less effective at killing pathogens in our humanure than composting systems are. This is due not only to the heat generated by composting, but also due to soil not needing to be added to humanure piles. The pathogens commonly found in human feces have all evolved to propagate themselves when coming into contact with soil (most likely through centuries and millenia of us burying our feces in the ground). When liquid waste from humanure leaves the septic tank and enters the adjoining leachfield , it carries with it the pathogens (which have not been killed in the tank) and brings them in contact with soil, where they can multiply. This is not to say that septic systems are dangerous. A healthy leach field will eventually digest and eliminate these pathogens, too. This short diversion is to point out that rural septic systems function with nowhere near the efficiency or efficacy of composting toilet systems, and to shift over thinking about humanure in a more positive and productive direction.

Two factors will kill pathogens in a compost pile: heat and time. Although, we know our humanure piles heat up (just from placing a hand over the top), I do not poke a thermometer into their centers to be sure that they reach a certain temperature. Not taking temperature, I fall back on time: one year will generally kill all pathogens in humanure compost, regardless of temperature. So, we let all our piles sit for a minimum of one year.

In The Humanure Handbook, Joseph Jenkins describes the "humanure hacienda" that he has built for his compost piles. His 'hacienda' includes a sloping rood to shed rain and snow. Jenkins lives in Pennsylvania, a humid climate within the Eastern Woodlands Bioregion, where it is important, as in other rainy places, to keep excess moisture from leaching nutrients (and potential pathogens) out of the pile and into the ground underneath. Here in Taos, New Mexico, we are up on a high desert plateau, with an average yearly rainfall of 10" - 12" and a very high rate of evaporation. We have found that in this BioRegion, rain and snow are not enough to keep a compost pile continuously active, so we keep our piles open to the moisture that we do get from the Sky, and supplement this by pouring our kitchen wash water over the pile we are currently building.

All of the steps we take do make our humanure composting system both time and labor intensive. Yet, as a whole system, it is working very well for us. Any of you who embark on humanure composting will need to weigh all the factors present in your specific situation, both land factors and climate factors, and address them each appropriately. There is no one single method that will work best for everywhere.

There is one last precaution that we take here. There do exist some pathogens. generally living in tropical regions rather than temperate ones, as well as some within the bodies of seriously ill people, that are more difficult to kill. (For further information on these more resistant pathogens, please refer to Future Fertility, by John Beeby, a publication of Ecology Action, and available through Bountiful Gardens, a mail-order garden supply center in Willits, CA). In these circumstances, a second year of composting will then kill all pathogens, for certain. Since our standard goal has been to become an educational and demonstration center, and since we don't wish to do health and background checks on our visitors, we began, at the beginning, the practice of turning each humanure pile once, after one full year of sitting.

When turning one of our piles, we do not place pallets underneath the turned pile, but we do put down a full straw bale base, and build up straw bale walls as with the original pile. Turning a pile is a good opportunity to check on the composting process, to see how materials have been breaking down. (For details on turning compost, please refer to Blog #8.) When the pile is completely rebuilt, we pour 4 five-gallon buckets of water over it to reactivate and reheat, and further supplement with monthly waterings for the next full year. Finally, after two full years of sitting, we apply this finished compost to our extensive border planting of small trees and shrubs. It is truly hard to believe , by now, what this healthy soil-enriching substance was born from!

For those of you interested in beginning a humanure composting practice, I recommend taking the following steps:

1.  Become proficient at composting regular garden and yard materials by practicing with them for a minimum of 1 year.
2.  Read The Humanure Handbook: A guide to composting humanure , written by Joseph Jenkins, thoroughly.
3.  Find an experienced humanure composter in your BioRegion who is willing to demonstrate to you their techniques, explain their site adaptations, and allow you to participate in the building of a pile.

As always, we are happy and willing to answer all your questions regarding humanure composting and/or any other homesteading topics we have raised. If there is interest, composting is something that we can provide training in here at Living Earth Garden Project, along with these other homesteading skills we have been presenting. Please let us know what your interests are.

With best wishes for a restful Winter!

Gardener Machei

Taos, New Mexico 

Composting In Practice

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners!

Last time we looked at the principles of composting and viewed them as a form of alchemy. This week we will present how we apply these principles in the building of compost piles here at Living Earth Garden Project. These compost piles are built to provide fertility to vegetable beds and orchard trees. We will hold off describing humanure compost piles, once again until next time, as they require extra procedures. (Please review our blog from December 9th, "Principles of Composting".)

The minimum size for a compost pile to properly heat up is 3ft x 3ft x 3ft. Maximum size, with some exceptions, to keep the center aerobic is 6ft x 6ft x 6ft. We build our regular compost piles to this larger size and our first step, then, is to mark out a 6ft x 6ft square on the ground with stakes. Next, using a digging fork, we loosen the soil lying within this square to ensure adequate drainage to the bottom of the pile and thus avoiding anaerobic conditions.

The first materials to be put down are the coarsest, most carbonaceous ones. Here, we use the woody stalks of quelites, a kind of wild spinach that volunteers freely around Taos. Sunflower stalks, cornstalks, or even tree branches could be used instead to ensure that Air is allowed to infiltrate the bottom of a pile. Putting the woodiest materials at the bottom also gives them the best chance for breaking down, and eventually becoming finished compost as well.

The next step is to begin layering green materials (nitrogenous - Fire element) with brown materials (carbonaceous - Rock element). The thinner these materials are layered, the better they will mix together to form finished compost. Yet, layering too thinly makes building compost tedious, so one effective recipe is to fill 2 five gallon buckets with green materials and layer then, then fill 2 five gallon buckets with brown materials and layer that, then back to green materials, and so on. Here in our vega (meadow) land, we are blessed with lush pasture, that, at many times of the year, is at a good ration of carbon (Rock) to nitrogen (Fire) for composting. We simply cut wheelbarrow loads of our pasture and layer them that way, keeping an eye on the proportion of green to brown materials.

It is best to build an entire compost pile all at once, yet in practice, we build onto them as time and energy allow. When we reach a height of 6 feet, we call it done and top the pile off with 4 five gallon buckets of soil. This soil weighs the pile down, holds in moisture, and introduces beneficial microorganisms. Soil could be added with each layer of green and brown materials and doing so would actually introduce these microorganisms more effectively. If following a 2 green/2 brown recipe, add 1/2 five gallon bucket of your own native soil to each layer.

The final step is to drench the compost pile with Water, pouring another 4 five gallon buckets worth on top. Again, it could be more effective to add Water with each layer, fully saturating all the materials up to that level. Sometimes, piles built in this manner, with materials getting completely soaked every step of the way, do not need any supplemental Water once they have been built. Here. in our situation of high winter groundwater, we are beginning with a minimum watering approach, to see how much moisture wicks up from the ground. If a compost pile does not receive enough water, the composting process slows down or stops. and the formation of finished compost is delayed.

Once the compost pile is built, if supplemental water is needed, a good method is to treat the pile as a garden bed. Give water to the pile whenever irrigating the garden beds nearby. Aim for that 50/50 Air to Water ration that we spoke about last time. Such an approach usually produces finished compost within 3 to 6 months, and almost always within one year.

One way to speed up the composting process is to turn the pile. Although some super fast methods call for more frequent turning, I do not recommend turning more frequently than once per month, once per lunar cycle, that is. Turning a pile involves preparing another square on the ground near or adjacent to the first square with woody material also layered on the bottom. Then some kind of strong fork and/or shovel is used to move all the materials over from the first square to the second one. The top and outside of the first pile are intentionally moved to the middle of the second pile, where they will compost better, and the inside of the first pile becomes the top and outside of the second pile.

If a second turning is desired, the compost pile can be moved back onto the first square, and so on, back and forth, with any more subsequent turnings. Although turning a compost pile is optional, and we have not turned our own fruit and veggie piles, one turning can help to ensure a more even breakdown of materials by following the outside to inside, and inside to outside rule.Without turning, some materials in the pile that did not break down fully may need to be screened out or picked out by hand, and then added to the next compost pile that is built, where they will finish decomposing.

Having stated some of the advantages of turning a compost pile, now let's look at simply letting a pile sit. While turning does speed up the composting process by introducing more Air between all the layers of material and a subsequent reheating of the pile to a higher temperature, the primary drawback is that more material, carbon especially, is burned off, oxidized, as the pile reheats each time, so that there is less finished compost as a result. A compost pile left unturned may retain as much as one-half of it's original built volume when finished. On the other hand, a frequently turned pile may give us little as one-tenth of its' original volume. To use a cooking analogy, this would be the difference between letting one pot of soup simmer, after an initial boil, and keeping a second soup on high hear, or continually bringing it back to a boil. The second soup will boil down much more quickly and yield less food overall. Water could be added, but the flavors (nutrients) will not meld together as in the first soup. Once again, we find that having patience is indeed a virtue!

Having now presented Composting in practice, next time we will look at the extra steps and precautions that need to be taken when composting humanure.

As before, we welcome your questions and comments.

With best wishes for these Winter Holidays.
Gardener Machei
Taos, New Mexico

Principles of Composting - Living Earth Garden Project Blog VII

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners! Last week we looked at Sawdust Buckets and completed our survey of Composting Toilet Systems. Thank you for your questions, comments and shares! We have now addressed the first 2 of our 4 Secondary Design Elements/Support Systems of our project. Let's review the list:

• Well - for access to clean drinking water
• Compost Toilets - to capture nutrients and avoid waste
• Solar Shower - to rinse off sweat and dust
• Compost Piles - for maintaining soil fertility

Although we have looked with some thoroughness at Composting Toilets, we have really only addressed the first half of this process: the capturing of nutrients and the avoiding of waste. The second half is about transforming this would-be waste into a beneficial product that can increase soil fertility. This process is composting, and we will skip down to the 4th element of our Secondary Design/Support Systems list : Compost Piles.

Let's begin with regular fruit and vegetable composting, and hold off on humanure composting until we have some basics down. Composting is ultimately a process that involves Alchemy. There are many methods and recipes out there, some of which you may already be familiar with. At the highest level, success with any of these methods is a result of keeping in balance the 4 traditional elements:

• Fire
• Air
• Water
• Earth/Rock

The 4th element, although commonly referred to as Earth, I prefer to think of as Rock. This is to keep in mind that we are not speaking about the entire Planet Earth in this case, just the densest, coarsest, most solid material found on her surface: Rock. Weathered rock is the parent material for all soils, but to form good fertile soil, the elements of Water and Air are needed and Fire to spark biological activity. Let's see how each Earth Element is represented in the compost pile:

Rock - the densest material is represented by brown, fully matured carbonaceous plant matter. Usually, when composting, it is found in the form of straw, but anything that has hardened and is biodegradable can potentially be used: fallen leaves, twigs and branches, wood shavings, animal bones. Carbon materials give a compost pile its' substance.

Fire - the element of lowest density, is represented by green, supple plants containing high percentages of nitrogen. Nitrogen is what sparks biological life and plant growth in our gardens. Nitrogen sparks microbe activity in the compost pile. Although represented by lush vegetative growth, any plant matter that has been cut while green, even if allowed to dry, can be used as a fire element: hay, grass, clippings, tomato and potato vines, green leaves. Similarly, animal manures are also high in nitrogen and both fresh and dry manure can be added to compost piles.

Water - is represented by the water we deliberately add to our compost pile, by rain we allow to fall onto a pile, as well as by the moisture contained in the plant and animal materials that we build our piles with. Too much water creates an anaerobic condition. In general, soggy anaerobic conditions can produce harmful bacteria and should be avoided. Not enough moisture and the composting process stops, too much Air.

Air - is represented by the open spaces within a compost pile. Certain materials, such as branches, are very effective at keeping air pockets within a pile, while other materials, such as grass clippings, tend to mat down and resist air infiltration. In general, it is more important to ensure that Air has access to the bottom and center of the pile. than it is to the top and sides of one.

Keeping a proper Air to Water ratio is one important key to composting success. Good, loose, friable garden soil can be used as an example. This good garden soil contains ~50% pore space. Ideally, this pore space is half-filled  with water and half left open to air. Of course, in practice, the water content in both soils and compost piles, is constantly fluctuating between one extreme and the other. Our job as Gardeners is to keep this 50/50 Air to Water ratio as best as we can (with some adjustments, in certain situations). Compost piles should be managed with the same goal in mind: keep that 50/50 balance as best as we can, over time.

The other balance to keep in mind when composting is that of Rock and Fire, that represented by carbon and nitrogen. In general, if carbonaceous materials and nitrogenous materials, as defined above, are added in equal parts, by volume, again a 50/50 ratio, by volume, this will keep an effective Carbon to Nitrogen in balance in the pile. This 50/50 ratio of Rock to Fire is more difficult to achieve than that of Air to Water because there is much more variability in these carbon and nitrogen materials. However, the truth is, that as long as the Air to Water ratio is kept fairly well-balanced, the microbial life in the pile will transform almost any combination of carbon to nitrogen materials into finished usable compost within one year's time in most locations. So, please do not be hesitant to start composting by what may seem to be, at first, an overly complex process. The microbial life within the compost pile will find the food combinations that they need. The only question is one of efficiency, and that we can improve through practice. Speaking of  microbial life brings us to a final analogy.

The compost pile can be seen as one large stomach, a giant digester. When we build a pile, we are feeding the microbial life in that pile, the 'bioherd'. This microbial life prefers a balanced diet, just as our own bodies do. Nitrogenous materials (Fire) are analogous to us living on a diet of fruit and salad vegetables. Fruit, especially, gives us quick energy to get going, but does not sustain our activities over time. Carbonaceous materials (Rock) are analogous to a diet of grains and root vegetables. Grains give us energy for the long haul, but without some Fire accompanying our meal, these foods can leave us feeling too heavy to get started. Likely, I believe , that we have all gotten by on an imbalanced diet for a time, until learning better habits from the experience. Both kinds of energy, fast and slow, are necessary for our bodies and for the body of the compost pile.

Well, there I go again, using up all our time and space, and just getting through the basic principles of composting. Let us know if there is too much detail , or not enough! Next week, we will continue by describing how we actually apply the principles presented today to the building of compost piles here at Living Earth Garden Project.

With best wishes for this week,

Gardener Machei

Taos, New Mexico

Sawdust Bucket Composting

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners! Last week we looked at Composting Toilet Systems in general. We noted that the composting of our own bodily wastes is an uncomfortable subject for many people, and this was acknowledged during the week. We revealed that there have been many different humanure composting systems developed that range widely in terms of complexity, cost, and user-involvement. We finished by considering that it is fairly safe and simple to begin with composting our own urine, even in a town situation. The book, Liquid Gold, bu Carol Steinfeld, shows various other ways in which to capture urine and then recycle its' nutrients for the benefit of plant growth.

Before moving on, allow me to note that although composting toilet systems are currently optional and voluntary, they are likely to become required of all of us in the future. Every time we flush a toilet, we are not only wasting good water, but we are also sending soil nutrients and organic matter out into our waterways, eventually, in most cases, to be deposited into our oceans. Those nutrients and organic matter need to go back into the soils that they were removed from. Current estimates, including those from the United Nations, predict that at present rates of soil depletion, we humans will have no farmable topsoil left on Earth in 30 to 60 years time.

Okay, having said that, let's move into the particular method of human manure composting that we have chosen to use here, at least for now. This method is known as the sawdust bucket system and is described in detail by Joseph Jenkins in his book, The Humanure Handbook: a guide to composting human manure. When starting on a land-based project, knowing what to do with our own bodily wastes can be an immediate barrier. In Wilderness Areas, we are directed to dig "cat holes", 6 or more inches down, and then cover our deposits thoroughly to keep wild animals from digging them back up (in their search for nutrients). Unless one has a very large tract of land, and is willing to walk to a different place each time these "cat holes" would soon accumulate beyond the ability of our land to absorb them.

The traditional toilet method on the homestead is the outhouse, or 'privy'. This is actually what I had in mind before we obtained our particular piece of land. I thought that we would simply dig a hole in the ground and put a toilet and outhouse on it. Then, when the hole was full, we would plant a tree over all those deposits to recapture the nutrients stored there, and move on to a new hole in a new spot. Our land is blessed with an abundance of groundwater. This groundwater makes possible plant growth that would otherwise be impossible in our high desert climate. High groundwater does make building more complicated, however, and one of those complications was that we had to dismiss this "outhouse/tree system" idea.

Although it did seem like a complication at the time, Joseph Jenkins shows through drawings that the old outhouse system was never all that good of an idea anyways. Unless the hole is lined and then pumped out, the pathogens in feces do leach into the surrounding soil, contaminating it both vertically and horizontally. This contamination happens in dry soil too, just not as broadly as in wet soil. The good news was that I had already been composting for 15 years, was familiar with a few different humanure systems from the farms I had worked on, and had recently taken part in a demonstration of this sawdust bucket system. I went ahead and read The Humanure Handbook thoroughly.

The sawdust bucket method is a simple system. First, we purchased a 'portable loo' by mail from a camping outfitter. They are made in Canada, but all it is essentially is a five-gallon bucket with a plastic seat and lid that snaps securely to the top rim. We then purchased some more five-gallon buckets with regular lids from the hardware store and gathered a large tubful of fresh sawdust from the local sawmill (to cover with one cupful each humanure deposit, whether solid or liquid, as well as giving each bucket and cupfuls at the bottom to start). We set up a small table and kept it supplied with toilet paper and alcohol-based hand sanitizer (which does not freeze in the cold weather). Later, we purchased another plastic toilet seat with lid in order to separate urine from feces (it is when the two are mixed together that the most disagreeable odors are created). By separating, the sawdust was able to absorb not only all of the liquid involved, but just about all of the odor as well.

As far as the 'privy/privacy' part of this composting outhouse system, we first put up a potty tent that was available through that camping outfitter, and as sunlight and wind degraded the nylon, we built strawbale walls on cement blocks around it with a wooden bond beam on top to keep the bales upright. A simple canvas tarp served as roof until it began breaking apart, at which point we replaced it with wooden slats. The doorway was left semi-open as it faced away from most activities and out onto 50 miles of open plateau with buttes and mountains on the horizon. All of this makes walking out to our 'composting potty' to make a 'time deposit' (with interest guaranteed)., a beautiful and unforgettable experience!

That is all anyone essentially needs to get started. While our approach reflects the realities of our land and climate, the underlying principles will remain the same anywhere. The outhouse structure, in particular, that we built around the toilets is well-suited for our high desert climate of  low rainfall, strong winds and extreme temperature swings. This kind of structure may be inappropriate, or need modification, in other bioregions.

Now, what to do with all the stuff in the buckets? Well, that is where some level of skill and knowledge are required. We will begin on that next week, when I will address Composting, both with humanure and with regular garden debris. As usual, please send us your questions.

With best wishes for this week!
Gardener Machei
Taos, New Mexico