The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

There is a post on Craigslist right now for some free composted manure in our neighborhood, so of course I’m all over that. Turns out a truckload was given to the Jesuit house up by St. Joe’s by a farm in Enumclaw, and there was a ton (probably quite literally) left over after they used all they could. When I pulled up the pile was probably 10 feet in diameter and 4 feet high. While I was filling bags and loading up the back of the car, a truck backed up. Between the two of us we barely dented the pile.

At some point, one of the residents came out and was joking about how you know the garden nerds when they are huddled around a steaming pile of manure, shoveling in the rain, and exclaiming “I can’t believe how much God loves me!”

We got some of those apparently compostable spoons on our last trip to IKEA (they’re made of corn and feel like soft plastic). I thought it would be fun to see how long they take to break down, so I threw them in the compost as I was turning it today. Might as well see how they do; I saw on someone else’s blog that they tried to compost one of those “compostable” plastic bag, and it wasn’t going anywhere after a year.

The most fun part of turning the compost is seeing all the worms at work… there are so many of them. I know this photo probably looks kind of disgusting to some of you, but it is an amazing sight to see hundreds of worms in each shovel-full. They seem to show up and as time goes on, there are more and more of them. By the time the compost is ready to put on the garden, we’re adding nice fertilizer plus a ton of worms.

It’s been a pretty crazy month, living in home-improvement limbo, leaving town more than we should have, and trying to keep up with everything. Despite the fact that I don’t actually have time to do so, I decided to take a break from work today to turn the compost. It really is one of my life’s great comforts… I’ve written about it before here, but every time it surprises me how satisfying it is.

I think the reason it blew me away today was because I’ve been so busy, working so hard on a variety of fronts, and then I realized that compost is one thing that does all the hard work on its own. I just throw plants and grass clippings in, jab a shovel into it a few times, and then it’s invaded by worms and everything is set in motion. I am so mentally and emotionally weary that it was completely refreshing to see that excellence occurs without my intervention. It gave me a little hope.