Paying attention to dirt
I've begun to pay attention to dirt. Not that I ever ignored it, but as an animal farmer attuned to grasses I never spent much time actually digging in the soil. But this year I'm trying my hand at growing vegetables and herbs in a serious way on a half acre of land right around my house. I want this little growing operation to be a sort of victory garden against global warming—with the goal of intensively growing vegetables for myself and local markets while using as little petroleum as possible. That means that I am returning to hand tools like the broad fork, the shovel, the hoe, and the scythe.
Using these tools instead of a tractor or tiller or mower is something close to using a bicycle instead of a car. While they aren't practical for everyone (I wouldn't expect people with 40 acres to use hand tools exclusively), they allow a speed at which I can pay attention. While digging a new garden I can see the layers of topsoil and clay with every lift of the shovel. I can see places where fires were had. I can see worms and grubs and ants all working to loosen the dirt and build up the soil's nutrients. I can see the roots of trees zigzagging through the soil and the thick network of grass roots holding the soil in place.
But even more significant than the things I can see is the life in the soil that I cannot see—the vast microfauna that do everything from fixing nitrogen to emitting electrochemical pulses to stimulating root growth. The soil is teaming with this life that is so varied that new species of soil microbes are constantly being discovered, some of them eventually being used as potent sources of antibiotics.
These microbes along with the nutrients they help manufacture and fix in the soil are largely responsible for soil's smell. It is a rich smell that has as varied a nose as wine. Whenever I’m digging, I try to get a whiff so that maybe one day I can train my nose to determine the quality of the soil based on smell alone.
By digging slowly I have also come across bits and pieces from previous people who lived on and farmed this place. I have found little iron bits that look like they belong to plowing equipment. I have also found pieces of thick, broken glass, pottery, and chipped flint—all of them marking the presence of people eating, hunting, and farming this place for hundreds of years before I arrived.
Some days I use a tractor. I can't mow 80 acres with a scythe by myself. But on the days I am working this half acre by hand I feel the goodness of the sun, and I pay attention to the dirt that works with plants and animals to convert the sun’s energy into the energy that my body harnesses to break this ground—the ground that my body will eventually build up with a little more carbon and nitrogen.
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