what i think about when i think about compost
Composting, a sacred alchemy where death transforms into life, where endings become beginnings– earth’s recycling system– starts with separating your organic waste from your inorganic waste. Responding to my visceral urge to sort my waste this way borders on making contact with the divine. In this seemingly mundane practice, I’m encountering a daily devotional, implementing my systems-based worldview, acting out of integrity, and physically manifesting my deepest principles.
In sorting my waste, I respond to a fundamental, innate need to restore natural order and systemic harmony. I want to facilitate the inherent relationships between things, to honor the elegance in circular systems and closed loops.
This isn't just about environmental consciousness. Though it includes that. It's about recognizing and applying the elegant logic of how things naturally work. I feel nearly a sense of relief, of righting, when I participate in and facilitate these cycles.
So. Compost. The noun. At once a pile of detritus and excrement, and an exquisite, energetic, breathing, intelligent organism. Where goes what's given itself. What's lived. And now lies at the other end to give life to something else.
In its decomposition and rebirth, compost embodies the truth that nothing really dies - it only changes form. Like stars that explode to create the elements that will form new stars and planets, organic matter in compost surrenders its current form to enable new life. When we compost, we're not just making soil or soil amendment - we're participating in one of the universe's most fundamental ceremonies. We're joining a ritual as old as life itself, where death serves life, where decay nurtures growth, where what seems like an ending reveals itself as just a beginning.
One year ago today, shortly after buying our house, I built our first compost bin. We like to joke that we have a $325,000 compost bin. We’re up to a three-bin system now. I can’t quite remember how we ended up with three instead of two. I think we were already out of space. We add all of our kitchen scarps, yard and garden waste, paper products, clean, untreated cardboard, biochar, woodchips, manure mixed with hay that we get from around the community, and I pick up coffee grounds from Starbucks every time I run errands.
We’ve even reaped already some of the fruits from this labor. We grew our fall greens in not-quite-broken-down compost with fantastic results.
In other news, with Don's help, Michal finished all the prep work for pouring the concrete for our patio. I helped tie the rebar grid. Guillermo and his crew will be here next Friday to pour.
