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Hungry, Hungry Soil

A meditation on food and flowers.

All the food we eat, from fast food fries to oat milk to bartlett pears to the most delicately thin slice of taro root, has its beginnings in the soil.

Without soil, there is no forest.

Without soil, there is no fen.

Without soil, there is no farm.

Without soil, there is no food.

Soil is a living, breathing, delicately balanced life force, like a magic carpet covering the earth. Scratch it, put a seed just half an inch down, moisten it, warm it, and a tomato plant grows! A magical medium, a mineral mystery.

The skin of the earth is alive, and we live off of its vitality. Some of us live off of it quite literally making a living from cultivating the soil and growing cash crops, trees, or pasture. Some live off of the soil by collecting what it nurtures—nuts, roots, seeds, grasses, bark, and cattails. Some companies scrape topsoil from its native land and sell it in plastic bags or dump it on a new home lot to smooth out the hills and bumps. Without topsoil, alive and slowly, constantly forming, we would have nothing to look at or eat.

We eat and drink the Earth.

Can you think of one thing you ate or drank today that does not come from the soil? This might seem like a silly question, but let’s see where it takes us.

Scrambled eggs.

The eggs that most western cultures eat come from chickens, millions and millions of chickens being raised on farms. Or, for my family, the one in our backyard (her name is Marylin, and she occasionally lays the sweetest little brown eggs, they’re called fairy eggs). These chickens must eat for their bodies to create that egg, and if they are lucky hens, they are let out to eat grass and bugs every day. Grass that grows from the soil and bugs that live in and eat that same soil. And the more grass and bugs those chickens eat, the more nutritious the egg.

And butter for the pan? Same sort of pattern. Millions of cows in the United States are raised for beef, but also some for milk, and, if they are lucky cows, they are let out to eat grass every day. Bacteria help the cow to turn that grass into sun-fueled globules of fatty lactose that come out as milk that we then make into butter, yogurt, cheese, kefir, and the list goes on.

Olive oil.

Instead of butter? Fair enough, from olives that grow from trees that need the sandy, mineral rich nutrients of the Mediterranean or California.

Bread or oatmeal? Made from finely milled seeds of various grasses—rye, wheat, barley, emmer, einkorn—that used their fungus lined roots to draw nutrients and water from the soil.

Lobster.

Imagine. Invisible bacteria, phytoplankton, and algae are making their own energy from the sunlit saturated upper levels of the ocean. Even the abyssal bottom of the ocean floor is spewing chemical nutrients from deep within the planet into the blackest of water where microorganisms use them to make food in the absence of light. And those invisible organisms are the bedrock of an ocean-sized food chain, microscopic food to feed whales and salmon, shrimp and clams, sharks and octopus. Us.

Hamburgers, hotdogs, milk, peanut butter, tofu, the list will go on and on.

Coffee and chocolate? Yes, let’s stop there for a sweet second. Both are made from beans that come from plants that are the complex and delicious result of pre-fermented seeds planted in tropical soils.

It takes a leap of the imagination to get to the soil from every single thing that we eat, but it is not a huge, insurmountable leap. No, it’s more like a pause before taking that first sip of coffee or tea in the morning. An imaginative pause to close our eyes and envision where the beans and tea leaves originated. Arabica? Dig deeper. Are they from South America? Africa? Asia? Were they grown under the wings of birds in mountain forests, or on a clear-cut plantation that removed native trees so good for the soil the coffee and tea came from? Who picked them? How much were they paid? Do they get to eat the food they harvest?

Cereal? The ingredient list on the side of the box is like an inventory of soil minerals—zinc, copper, phosphorous, magnesium, iron, and calcium to name a few. It’s more like eating a soil sample than a box of Wheaties.

Tortillas? The seeds of an annual grass, maize, ground and flattened and patted or pressed into savory circles to be filled with beans or meat or cheese. One of the best tasting meals I ever had was called a papusa. It was made everywhere in El Salvador, but the first one I had was made a roadside stand, a papuseria. I watched them take the ground maize mixed with water, expertly shape it into a neat circle, place cheese, meat, refried beans, or even edible flowers in the middle that they covered up with more cornmeal, and slap it on a large, round griddle. Giant jars of fermented cabbage, curtido, were on tables outside, ready to put on top. Papusas were sunshine in my mouth.

The average rate of soil replenishment is 100 years per inch. In the United States, we use soil 10 times faster than that. Some estimates predict just 60 years of topsoil left in the world. A recent study published in 2021 by three geoscientists at the University of Massachusetts provides a staggering number. An average of 35% of the topsoil in the Midwest, what was once described as a rich, silky mousse, is now completely lost from over tilling, wind, and water erosion.

Mathematically speaking, we need to balance soil withdrawals with compost deposits before we lose any more. Biologically speaking, soil is a living organism made up of other living organisms, minerals, water, and air and needs to be fed in order to stay alive. Geologically speaking, soil is the very youngest, the thinnest, the tip top of earth’s layered history. Soil is just a century old, but the oldest rocks, found in the depths of Australia, are 4.4 billion years old and caught glimpses of the birth of our moon. Spiritually speaking, soil is more than the sum of its individual parts—clay, silt, and ancient sand. These tiny particles, hewn from the cooled rock of earth’s molten core are knit together by lichen, bacteria, and fungus until they can support cells that live off minerals and sunshine. Until they become soil.

After WWII, industrial agriculture took hold and chemical technology moved from the military field to the crop field. The results were immediate and green. But decades of increasing fertilizer and pesticide application resulted in tractor-compacted subsoil and heavy losses of trace minerals, micronutrients, fungi, bacteria, and other micro-organisms that give soil life. We are only just beginning to understand the importance of macrobiotics in farming.

Like native flora and fauna, we’ve lost native soil, some of it never to be recovered. Who knows how many millions of microscopic life forms have lived and died and gone extinct right under our noses. What did they look like? What did they do? Were they replaceable? Life is morphing constantly, but we’ve cut it short, unnaturally so.

The fertility, water holding capacity, and tilth of soil comes from biological diversity. When biology is replaced with monocropping and chemical fertilizers, it is like replacing a soil’s earthy vocal cords with a human tape recording. Instead of singing its native song, a field can only say “corn, corn, corn” and this field only “wheat, wheat, wheat” with an occasional season of fallow silence. Pretty soon, a field is completely expressionless without chemical assistance.

I do believe that, given time and various forms of compost, fields will begin to sing their native songs again. There is no use telling them what tune is acceptable. “Weeds” (many of which turn out to be important native plants) pop up like notes out of place and horribly out of tune with our idea of a field. At first, they seem an eyesore compared to the beautiful, sterile, chemically induced waves of grain we are so used to driving past. But the miracle is that soil, in partnership with farmers and gardeners who see the value in a living, singing soil, can heal with time and compost, and I am looking forward to the symphony.

Way to Compost 4: The Barrel or Compost Tumbler

We bought our first house nine years ago (still here!), and the first thing I looked for was a place to build our compost pile. I found a nice, hidden corner for the food digester and a spot under the two hackberry trees in the back for a version of the 3 bin system. But it would be a year before compost was ready, and I needed some now! I was planting a garden soon and had none of the humus-rich, wonderfully textured stuff to fork into the soil before planting. My worm bin was humming along in the garage (we moved it with us, worms and all, and we’d never had a garage before), but it did not produce enough compost for even 50 square feet of a garden.

Our food digester and leaf pile tucked between fence, wild cherry, and old playground ball

The appeal of the barrel system is speed, and that turning it is as easy as turning a handle. Barrel composters often sit up off of the ground on a frame with a handle that turns a paddle inside of the barrel to mix up the browns and greens into compost. Other designs allow you to turn the entire barrel, rather than having a paddle and axle inside. I had a friend who had his barrel on the ground. He added materials to it as needed and simply rolled it on the ground about once a week. Because it was on the ground, red wigglers found their way in and helped out.

A quick search on the internet led me to Ms. Tumbles, but there are lots of ways to acquire your own tumbler. You can build one, grab an old garbage can with lid and roll it around, or buy one.

Like all successful compost piles, a barrel composter will need both brown and green materials, moisture, oxygen, and mass. If you can provide all of the necessary ingredients in the right ratios, it can work just as well as a hot compost pile. If your barrel is up off of the ground, critters won’t be able to access it as easily, a bonus for those in the city.

Side note: Just last week I watched a healthy looking skunk emerge from beneath our neighbor’s old garage that sits along our property. It waddled along the fence, taking a detour under the trampoline, brushing past the now blooming comfrey, and stepped right up to her breakfast of compost. While I’m not too worried about this (gasp!), others may not be as welcoming to critters, so a barrel is perfect. Contained, up high, skunk proof.

Photo by Tom Friedel: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Striped_Skunk.jpg

Turning it is also easy, and you won’t need to get out the shovel every few weeks. Barrels fit well in a smaller yard much better than a three bin system can, and for those who like a tidy garden, it looks just that, neat and tidy. This is a good option for those who do not have time to make and turn a pile, have little room in the backyard, and want compost fairly quickly.

Here’s the thing, though. Barrel composters often claim to provide compost in just a couple of weeks. But like good wine, good compost takes attention to detail and time to cure. You might get compost in three days to two weeks, but it will not be as humus rich as piles that cure for a year or more.

Slicing into this one year old pile is like cutting into a humus cake, full of richness for the soil, frosted with fall leaves

Humus is garden gold. It is the final result of decaying plant and animal matter, whether in a forest or your compost pile. As your leftovers break down further and further, they get down to their most elemental selves, a negatively charged humus particle. Think of humus as a plant buffet—the most stable form of plant food on the planet. Briefly, humus holds minerals, nutrients, and nitrogen in the soil so they don’t leach away. When plant roots come into contact with humus, they exchange their positive ions for the negatively charged food they need to grow—phosphorous, calcium, nitrogen. Humus also gives the soil more water and oxygen holding capacity by becoming a kind of sponge.

Humus is the casserole of the soil: spongy, generous, something for everyone.

Humus is in sharp decline. Modern farm methods need crops in quick succession. Instead of adding organic matter in the form of cover crops and letting the soil rest and regain its humus for the next crop, we add synthetic fertilizers that tend to be over applied and leach away into our water systems. Fertilizer cannot create the kind of tilth, the crumbly, dark, sweet-smelling soil, that humus creates. They are a quick, chemical fix to a deep and long-term humus shortage.

Not to despair! The answer to our humus shortage is staring us in the face, on our dining room tables, right at our fingertips. We can save humus with everything we throw away. Humus is created through decomposing organic matter, organic matter that Americans have an abundance of. Millions of tons of organic matter is sent to landfills each year where it creates methane, a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide, instead of humus, the very thing we need to replenish the soil. Cities like Seattle, New York, and Portland, OR are beginning to divert organic waste to compost facilities in large numbers, but we need more cities on board. Some European cities even use anaerobic composting (without air), biodigesters, to create energy from decomposing food waste. Digging through compost history, I discovered a woman scientist from Germany hired to design and install biodigesters for Mexico, turning their organic waste into energy, in the 1950’s! We are just beginning and at last learning from, as Janine Benyus calls them, “our wild teachers” and “nature’s genius.” Just like in nature, when we compost, nothing is wasted, everything can be recycled.

The one becomes the other, and the other becomes the one, in a reciprocal song that changes key now and then, but can keep making music forever.

Leftovers are not waste, they are opportunity. An opportunity to heal the soil, mitigate climate change, and grow beautiful crops, flowers, and trees. To some, putting leftovers in a barrel and turning it might sound as crazy as getting in one and riding it over the edge of Niagara Falls, but compost barrels are just as thrilling for the worms, bacteria, and fungi inside, tumbling your compost into a national treasure waiting to be buried and brought back to life.