While everyone else seemed to be cleaning up, I was messing up, digging holes in the front yard for my new apple, peach, and plum trees and planning where I would dig up the front yard's sod so that I can put in an herb bed. Meanwhile, my compost pile was growing as was my pile of manure as I hauled down more of it from the farm. My chickens ran wild behind my house pecking at the grass and running for cover at the slightest alarm call of the rooster. 

It turns out that life and nature are messy. Children are messy. Nature is messy. Growing a cornucopia of food is messy. What is not messy are sod lawns neatly trimmed by gas-spewing mowers, and fertilized with petroleum-based synthetics that fill the suburban air; what is not messy are the long rows of soybeans and corn spread across thousands of acres in neat lines with little life besides; what is not messy are the long, white barns that hold in the thousands of chickens and pigs "to protect them from disease," as the industry says.

But sunlight is the best disinfectant, children who play with a variety of animals may be less prone to sickness than those raised in "sanitary" environments, and dung beetles and ants clean up and bury in the ground any waste animals choose to leave behind to fertilize the soil. Weeds and pests are not the signs of poor soil or some other problem in the ecosystem. Nature is messy, but it is efficient. So why can't we accept that?