The Com-POST

I'm writing a post about compost. What compost? The compost we built today. It all started when a man named Brian drove a dump truck full of horse manure onto our field today and....dumped.



So we got started. We laid down a bunch of pine boughs just to give it a little lift off the ground for drainage and aeration. Then we started making layers. Like a wedding cake of poo. We started with hay for a few inches, then horse manure, then seaweed(which had been sitting in a big stinky pile for the last two months, as our dedicated readers will remember) then sod(cut off our field a couple of months ago) then hay, and all the way through the cycle again and again until it was about 4 feet high. The end result was a big pile of delicious waste, ready to break down into delicious humus(delicious for our plants next year hopefully). Who would have thought shoveling crap could be so much fun!



We still have lots of manure, so more compost piles will be coming soon, and we may get more too, from other local horse owners with big piles of poo, and no one to turn them into veggies.

In other news, Katherine will begin reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho to us tonight. Should be a hoot. Also, Mike and I have started up daily juggling practice again, after our inspiring first market experience.

And more! Thursday night, Mike and I went to St. John for a conference on "Atlantica" where we saw Maude Barlow and a couple of others speak about/against Deep Integration and Free Trade. It was very moving at times, and it's also always nice to be in a room of 500 or so people who really care. To quickly introduce the issue, big business in the maritimes is hoping to diminish the border between us and New England even more than NAFTA already has. So basically all of the problems associated with free trade apply. For those of you unfamiliar with such issues or wishing to learn more, please visit www.canadians.org. and click on the section called "deep integration"(on the left menu) All in all, an inspiring event, and perhaps a slight kick in the butt to be a little more educated on current events. But it can't beat shoveling poop!