How I Grow.

There are dairy farms all around us. The farmers use a truck that drives around to the nearby fields and sprays manure. This is their way of fertilizing and dealing with an apparent overload of cow shit- it's a modern farming technique. I always know when they're spraying manure because their truck, "The Husky," dribbles a line of liquefied cow manure all along its path. It stinks to high heaven. The worst part about The Husky is it seems like the farmers always choose the most beautiful days to spray the manure- and the hottest days of the summer. The stink sticks to the air and burns your nose. I've seen The Husky in action- it reminds me of a cow lifting its tail in the middle of the field how it sprays its liquefied cow manure. I always feel slightly embarrassed for The Husky driver- should I give a polite hand wave when I see him or look the other way? Imagine waking up that morning and knowing that your work is driving The Husky and what a foul mood it must incite upon that driver. It's like farting in elevators all day long. While I admit that I often click my tongue at the farmers for not thinking of a better way of dealing with the excess shit, I also stifle my judgements because I am thankful that I have farmers as neighbors. Much better than suburban sprawl, I remind myself- which carries its own kind of stink.

But cow manure in itself isn't necessarily gross. Think of all the cooking fires and homes around the world that rely upon it- homes that I've eaten in and homes that the very walls I've slept in have been made of this wonderful commodity. What's gross is this modern farming technique- of mixing it with water and spraying it into the air. It's an industrialized problem not to know how to use this resource. But I digress.

We all have excess manure in our lives. How to deal with our shit is an age old question. I don't know anyone who doesn't struggle with it. In Buddhism this is called Dukkha. It's suffering. It's wanting what you don't have. It's judging others and not realizing that we're all interconnected. It's attaching fiercely to our own individual experiences- our own life stories and our own supposedly personal pain. It's the First Noble Truth.

I grew up in a family who believed in spreading their Dukkha around- a multi-generational Husky Family! I was a good Husky girl- I could yell and prove a point and know that I was right. I could carry my Dukkha around with pride. My Dukkha was hard earned: a totally freaky family situation, being adopted when I was 15, and trying to navigate an overpopulated planet in crisis. All through my twenties I lashed out at those around me. I blush now to think of all the Dukkha I spread around. I blush even more thinking of all the future Dukkha I will spread around despite myself.

Somewhere along the line I became aquainted with Buddhism, and though I first flat out rejected the First Noble Truth, it sunk in anyway. Realizing that suffering, that Dukkha, is universal was completely liberating for me. I didn't need to walk around trying to prove something anymore. I could begin to look at those around me, even the people who really pissed me off, and see that they were sufferers....just like me. As soon as that barrier was destroyed empathy was born.

Which leads me to my compost pile. We cleaned out our chicken house the other day. I was walking around the garden feeling sorry for myself that the growing season was over. I was attached to those fresh vegetables. And attached to the idea of a gentle, sweet, giving earth. I was attached to walking out in the garden first thing in the morning without a biting frost. I looked around and saw death and decay. There were rotten tomatoes and peppers and wilted plants all around. The trees had dropped their leaves.

After a time of despair, of wondering why the hell do we live here instead of the tropics, we decided to clean the chicken house of it's season of manure. We shoveled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of it. The air was thick with a layer of ammonia laden dust. We were breathing in chicken shit! Pulling our t-shirt necks over our noses we persevered to get the job done.

I looked around and noticed all of the dead leaves lying around. I sat quietly and looked at the pine trees. I thought about how bad winter sucks. It reminded me of how much I hated winter as a child- stuck in the house with chain-smoking, alcoholic meanies picking on me because they had nothing better to do. And then, I got up. I picked up my rake and my shovel and layered that compost. Chicken manure was winter time blues. Pine needles were melancholic memories. Leaves and debris were arguments with my spouse. Rotten tomatoes and other garden debris were every time I was ever misunderstood- or underestimated. The whole world began to look like a potential compost pile. Potential is the key word there. What compost becomes is what's so amazing. That's part of my transformation from being a manure spreader to a composter- to try to focus my mind to see what's composatable. . It's been a long time coming. I harvested some really beautiful vegetables this year from our garden. We surrounded our family in beauty and we fed our family- and it wouldn't have happened if we couldn't see the potential in all that refuse.



Composting relies upon admitting that manure exists and that it's all around us. It's not denying the manure. It's not sweeping the manure under the rug or calling it another name. It's not throwing it at someone else. It's using it wisely to make the world a better place- it's valuing it for the precious commodity that it is. It could be gardening or it could be making art. The main thing is don't waste it. The rule of thumb to make compost (or art) is to layer it and give it time to turn into something useful. Or beautiful. Or nourishing. The rest happens naturally.




I think Albert Camus was talking about compost, pain, and Buddhism when he said, "We all carry within us our places of exile; our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others."