The Death Of Resurrection..

I've been quite on the blogging front for awhile now, in fact it's the longest I've gone without posting since I started sharing my incoherent ramblings a couple of years back. But in amongst the transition to a new country and a new culture and a new.. well, pretty much everything, combined with a stronger inner pull towards of a couple of other creative pursuits, carving out the time to sit and think and write has had to take a bit of a backseat. But today as I followed one of those other creative pursuits and stood in my front garden and kicked about in the dark brown soil I couldn't help but think back to my old Garden in Banaras and the stark contrast between these two locations in which I've grown. And then the flood of memories came rolling in! 

It's been almost twelve months since we packed up our lives into eight bags and left our home in Banaras for the mountains of northern Thailand and lately my nostalgia for India has been fierce. All the difficulties and disasters have been glossed over and in my mind all that now remains is an intense longing for the friends and places (and Chai!) that we left behind. For those of you who know me or followed my blogging about the Resurrection Garden you'll know how much of my life I pumped into that soil and of how much joy (and pain) it gave back, and today as those memories filled my mind my heart began to ache. And so tonight with my little ones now tucked up in their beds, I find myself sorting through old photos and writing up one final post on the Resurrection Garden as a way of getting some closure on a very special period in my life which I never felt I'd quite done up till now.

In November 2014 we returned to pack up our home in Banaras after having been back in Australia. When I left 6 months earlier there were winding paths throughout the garden to explore that were hedged in by ripe tomatoes on the vine, 7 different varieties of lettuce, marigolds in bloom, giant garlic, broccoli, kale, rainbow chard, various beets in full swing and rows upon rows of carrots just weeks away from harvest. When I returned there was this.

 

The paths were gone, the weeds were 2+ foot tall and the entire garden had become an impenetrable thicket of inedible chaos. I tried to get in deep enough to find the back path but considering the prevalence of venomous snakes on the property I soon gave up looking and returned to a safer zone to take it all in. All my hard work, all the hours I had spent transforming it, all the people who had gotten their hands dirty along side me, all of it dissipated amidst a sea of green. I was saddened but not heartbroken, I had returned well prepared for what my garden would look like after 6 months without anyone to tend to it and knowing how quickly the weeds would revel in the glory that was my much worked on soil. Before leaving it I can so clearly remember standing with one foot in the garden and one foot outside of it and reaching down with both hands to grab at the soil. The soil outside the garden was hard, lifeless and impenetrable. The soil in my garden (which was once exactly the same as that outside) was dark, rich, sweet smelling friable soil that was packed full of life. If nothing else, the feeling that accompanied seeing the outcome of so many sweaty hours of hard work that resulted in such incredible transformation will get me through any future gardening projects with the knowledge that if it was possible there, then it is truly possible anywhere.

The day before our flights the groundskeeper began to hack and slash his way throughout the back corner of the property and managed to uncover what remained of the Resurrection Garden. All that could be found in this once lush piece of Eden were the various colours of discarded plastics and shards of rubbish now scattered amidst the ruins. Aimlessly I walked it's shattered paths where now no green thing remained until the pangs of sadness that echoed in my chest grew so heavy that I slumped to the ground in the place where my garden bench - proudly constructed of an ancient and weather worn stone slab, once stood. I sat there quietly for a good while, breathing it all in for one last time, until my silent meditation was a invaded by the well known sight of a plastic bag full of my neighbour's rubbish soaring out their window, over the wall and landing squarely where my broccoli's once grew. I erupted into laughter, the kind of wild maniacal laughter usually reserved only for cartoon super villains, and as the familiar sight emerged of my many neighbours poking their heads out their windows and over rooftops to look at the odd looking foreign guy in his garden, I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, yelled out a final 'thankyou for your gift,' and returned to my home.

As I sort though the many photos I snapped during my time in Banaras, one of the best visuals that can sum up my journey with the Resurrection Garden has got to be the following 3 panoramics. I can so vividly recall standing in the spot these photos were taken from and timidly asking Shooksplitty Boom if she'd be willing to let me turn this area into my garden instead of her initial plan of a row of fruit trees. After she so selflessly agreed to let me rob her of her land I took this first photo so that I'd be able to remember it rightly when I looked back on it in the future.

August 2012

 
Over the coming months the amount and variety of foreign objects I pulled from the soil was staggering! The hours were long, the work was hard and the temperature was at times unrelentingly oppressive but slowly yet surely our progress began to show itself. To every traveler, friend, pilgrim and stranger who did so much as lift a finger to help within this space, I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for the genuine joy your work added towards!

February 2014

 
Sandwiched between my first and last days there emerged a golden period in which one could find a thriving, productive and organic vegetable patch known as the Resurrection Garden! A true rarity in its time and place. With the first fruits of my harvest I would offer them to the families who overlooked the garden (indeed the very same ones who would 'deposit' their rubbish in amongst my tomatoes) and thereafter used them at home as well as to feed the many travelers who would come for lunch at our River Ashram. Friday afternoons became a community gardening event in which travelers from around the globe would gather to work in, around and on the garden, make music, drink chai and simply help create the beauty which was our space. I can remember planting seeds with my daughter and watching the delight in her face as she'd pull her radishes out of the ground not much more than a month later. I remember many mornings sitting with my tiny newborn son on my garden bench, the early morning mist still hanging thick in the air, the Chai mug still warm in my hand, the stinging pain of sleep deprivation still heavy on my eye lids. I remember the yelps of the Bundar (monkeys) as they dropped my half chewed vegetables and fled the scene of their crime once I had truly learned how to wield a slingshot. I even remember the plastic bag full of human poo I found crushing my tomato seedlings. And I remember standing in my garden for the last time and like everything else in Banaras had to say 'good bye.'

 

November 2014

What blows my mind most about these images is the almost identical sight of barren, littered and dead landscapes in the shots taken when I began in August 2012 and when I left in November 2014. It's almost as though Banaras has erased any evidence that I was ever there. But this doesn't bother me in the slightest, for I'll still know. I'll still know the frustration, pain, sweat, heat stroke, germination, growth, transformation, harvests, joy, peace giving, soul nourishing times I spent in that space. And really, isn't that what's most important? Even if it forever returns to nothing, I'll still know, and now you'll know too.

Monkey Battles, Garlic Thieves & The Spoils Of War..

December 2013

 
During a recent conversation with my good friend Ragnar about my garden back in Banaras, it occurred to me that I had never posted the final update from the last few months of work in the Resurrection Garden. Somewhere in amongst our relocating back to Australia for 6 months this post quite understandably just got lost in amongst the hubbub of life. So without further a do, I'd like to offer you an insight into some of my monkey troubles, garlic thieves and the spoils of war!   

December 2013

In late December I had broken the back of the manual labor and was mostly in maintenance mode with the Garden so most visits were just about some spot weeding, enjoying a chai on my favourite garden seat and the daily task of removing the neighbour's rubbish (and semi-regular bags off poo). I had already planted out all the beds with the seedlings I'd been growing in my house in the previous months and things were coming along nicely but as things always go in Banaras, an increase in production results in an increase in interest, and not the positive kind.

For a number of months we'd been frequently commenting how great the absence of Bundar (monkeys) had been and how well our gardens were able to get established in their absence. But wherever they had been they had obviously decided it was enough and back to our homes they came, and brought with them plenty of reinforcements. Almost daily I'd be racing up the to gardens, slingshot and warhammer in hand (ok.. so maybe it was just a large stick) to chase them away but ultimately it was a war of attrition and both sides were amply supplied. Oodbilav is a crack shot with our hunting slingshots and would regularly send them scurrying back to higher grounds with their tails between their legs (though usually after they had filled their belly's from our gardens). And even our neurotic landlord went and bought a high powered air riffle and would regularly patrol the property with his young sons taking shots at them. One day he even confessed to trying to shoot one in it's bottom but missed and hit it in the heart! He said that it died soon after and so he wrapped it in a mala made of marigolds and that night, under the cover of darkness, launched it off his roof top and sent it splashing down into the Ganga (Ganges River) 3 stories below.. Ooh how the madness never let up!

February 2014

As it got later into December and the cold really set in, you could see the difference in growth as things really began to slow down in the Garden. Crops that weren't already well established either died off or essentially their growth ground to a halt and as this dramatically effects the flavour of most crops, some of them were forcibly relocated to their new home in the compost pile. To fill in the spaces of those crops that weren't performing well I chanced upon a small gardening store in town that had a new pile of seedling strewn across their counter and I managed to pick up a couple of different types of veggies that went straight into the ground. They didn't perform quite as well as I'd hoped but when you're handed a pile of seedlings that have their roots completely exposed and are wrapped in nothing but strips of wet newspaper, well, you only have moderate expectation (and for AU$0.43 I didn't loose much sleep over it).

The Organic Hairy Canadian

Considering that the River Ashram is a Jesus Ashram, it probably comes as no surprise that Christmas day ends up being one of our busiest days of the year. Each year we hold a huge celebration on Christmas day and invite travelers and friends to join us in all our festivities. In the past 3 years we've had anywhere between 80 and 120 people rock along (last year we had a turn out of people from 26 different countries) and we always put on an incredible feast. Fresh salad is a rare commodity around Varanasi - and a fresh Organic Salad, well, that's an even rarer find - so I'd been holding off harvesting my salad greens for a while as I wanted to share them as part of the Christmas celebrations. And as you can see in the above pic, between Shookdedy Ba-Boooom's garden and mine, come Christmas morning we had a fantastic time in the Gardens harvesting an amazing collection including 8 different types of fresh, crisp, gorgeous organic lettuce which was devoured in no time.

January 2014

 
In January, the cold in Varanasi was at its peak and so as per our tradition we skipped town and heading for the warmer climates of north Thailand to have a couple of weeks holiday, be a part of a conference and catch up with some truly sweet friends who run a community similar to ours in the northern town of Pai. Knowing that I wouldn't be around I used up a great deal of the 80kgs of straw that I had bought months earlier and went to town heavily mulching everything.

Mulch is one of those wondrous things! It's brilliant for water conservation as it keeps the sun from blazing down on the bare earth and drying out your top soil, thus keeping the soil moist and reduces your need for watering by around 60%. It helps keep your soil temperature constant which reduces shock and stress on your plants (particularly helpful for me during these cold months). It helps keep the weeds down and prevents a lot of the weed's seeds from germinating (which is a massive ongoing fight I'm having in the Resurrection Garden) and less weeds means less competition for the nutrients and water that you want going to your dedicated food crops and not away from them. And if you're using an organic mulch such as Straw, Pea Straw, Cane, Bean, Lucerne, etc. as they break down they release organic matter back into the soil which improves drainage and soil structure as well as encouraging earthworms and microbial activity. So if you're new to Gardening then let it be known; Mulch is your friend!

 

December 2013

 
I've tried on a couple of occasions to explain why I put straw onto my garden to my neighbours and Mali ('groundskeeper') but with little success. My Hindis not great so obviously that's a pretty big hurdle, but in Banaras there is really only 2 options when it comes to most things; the way it's always been done and the wrong way - and putting what cow's eat for lunch on top of your garden is quite simply not the way things are done! Shookdedy Ba-Boooom tells the story of her early days gardening at the Ashram when she first tilled the soil, watered and mulched, went inside only to come back later that afternoon to find that the Mali had raked up all the mulch and set it on fire. As I said, mulching your garden is quite simply Not.The.Way.Things.Are.Done!

January 2014

The tomato plants had been growing like a dream and I was keen to built a trellis to help support them grow upwards instead of into the giant tomato thicket they were currently in the process of creating. My neighbours sell bamboo and twine is super cheap around these parts and so with these resources and a bit of research I ended up creating a trellis of horizontal double layers of twine, essentially supporting growth by twisting the tomato branches through each double line of twine for each foot of vertical growth. The trellis was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time but time restraints meant that I just never got around to it. Once the trellis was up I began threading the branches up through it and the finished product worked a treat! The only down side was that in the process I sadly damaged a number of the branches whilst unraveling the colossal mess that their branches were in, so the lesson of doing things before they really need to be done is one which I'll commit to learning.. sometime in the future.. perhaps.. ergh, knowing me probably not.. But once it was done the tomato plants really did continue to grow wonderfully and soon after began putting out hundred of clusters of young fruits which if they were lucky enough to avoid the Bundar charged on to maturity.

 

February 2014

 
In February we returned from Thailand and to be honest, I was a little heart broken coming back into the Resurrection Garden. In the weeks prior to leaving for Thailand there had been a number of wonderful Community Gardening afternoons and the Garden was in the best shape of it's life and was an absolute delight to be in. Upon returning it was like walking into a different garden altogether. With three weeks of my neighbour's uncollected rubbish scattered everywhere, weeds which had gone unchecked and the telltale signs of the presence of veggie thieves, I found it hard to even want to be in there. One of the biggest disappointments was probably the veggie thieves who had helped themselves to my imported elephant Garlic (which was nowhere near ready for harvesting and thus inedible and a complete waste to steal) as I had such big plans to multiply that Garlic and spread it out amongst my local friends who grow their own food so they could continue growing it at their homes. I'll never know who stole it, and even though the safe money is on my landlords - they now own a gun, so I plan to quietly lick my wounds from the safety of my home and never speak of this again!

It took me a couple of weeks before my heart was ready to really invest itself back into the Garden, but once I was ready, I hit it again with passion. And as you can see in the above image, towards the end things began to once again look and feel magical again.

Heirloom Carrots

One aspect of gardening that I'm becoming increasingly excited by is in the arena of heirloom varieties. Whilst I'm still a complete novice in the field I was particularly excited to track down and trial this variety of Purple Carrots. Even though they still had a while to go before reaching full maturity, I'd previously promised Little Feather that she could help me harvest them and as we were only a week away from heading back to Oz I decided it was time for us to put on our Gum boots, march up to the garden and get our hands dirty pulling up a few different varieties of carrot that we'd been growing. Sure they're cheap as chips and take a long time to grow, but eating carrots fresh from the Garden, really, how can you resist?!
 

Rainbow Silverbeet/Chard, Broccoli, Basil, Lettuce, English Spinach, Carrots, Rocket, Kale, Cos Lettuce, Mini Cos, Black Russian, Gross Lissi & Cherry Tomatoes.

 
With only a couple of days left before leaving I decided it was time to get out into the Garden for one final harvest. As you can see from the above shot, it resulted in a fantastic haul of amazing tasting crops and brought a real sense of accomplishment to all the sweat and tears I'd put into this project in the last two years. I've spent so so so many hours in that space, sometimes feeling a great sense of refreshment, sometimes pulling my hair out; constantly battling the monkeys, the rubbish, the weeds, the neighbours, the termites, the years of soil mistreatment, the elements and so to really experience that joy of dig my hands into the earth and pulling out literally arms full of fresh produce really made my heart feel full. I was able to pass out what would have been baskets full of veggies over the wall to my neighbours (yes.. the same ones who send baskets full of their faeces my way) and whilst showing gratitude in these sorts of situation doesn't seem to be a common cultural trait amongst Banarsi folk, I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there there was a bit of love being handed back and forth too. 

February 2014

As a closing though, if you were keen to visit the Resurrection Garden but the thought of forking out thousands of dollars to make the trip to Varanasi doesn't quite appeal to you, I have something which might just be the next best thing. Whilst this is from back in January and certainly isn't as good as being there in the flesh, you do get the benefit of checking it out from the comfort of your own home (which will certainly save you a few rupees)! So have a click on the following link and take a look around (works best on a tablet or smart phone but using the arrow keys on your keyboard is also good) and as my Little Feather likes to say; "Welcome to be here!!"
 
                                                                            >>> The Resurrection Garden 3D <<<

मेरे बगीचे में - In My Garden..

* Time has really gotten away from me these past months and I haven't posted anything about the Resurrection Garden in what feels like forever! Parts of this blog have been sitting around half finished for months so I'm excited to finally release it from it's purgatorial state (otherwise known as the draft folder) and out into the world. *


In mid October 2013 I had 5 of the 7 beds dug out and began throwing about some seed. Much to Wildflower's dismay, I had trays full of seedlings in our house that I'd been growing from seed and they were doing well on the window sill because I was finding that very few seeds that I was direct sowing into the garden were germinating. Over the space of a month I'd wasted quite a few seeds over a few different sowings with very poor results to show for it, and so I start chitting seeds at home to see if I could work out if the problem was with the seeds or if I'd need to start looking elsewhere.

October 2013

 

Chitting the seeds (essentially pre-sprouting seeds on a wet towel/paper) was working a treat and within the month I had 4 trays filled with various kinds of lettuce, spinach, Zucchini, Cucumbers, beetroots, Leeks, tomatoes, squash, broccoli, kale and Rainbow Silverbeet/chard and wanted to get them into the garden as soon as possible. The temperature was slowly coming down more and more so I was keen to try and give my seedlings the best chance to establish before the winter months kicked into high gear, but fighting with the weeds was proving to chew up a considerable amount of my time so things felt like they were progressing at a painfully slow pace. I'd look enviously across the grass at Shookinton's Garden which was overflowing with leafy greens and dream that mine could look so beautiful, but at that point it felt like I was spending so much time just trying to establishing the new plots and liberate the soil of weeds that I'd never get there.

At one point I foolishly began to let myself believe that I was almost finished with all the hard labour of clearing the soil.. then I began tilling the 6th plot and was slapped back into reality. The pile of rocks in the image above is just what I had pulled out of that small plot behind it and it's worth noting that in the past 2 years I've paid 6 day labourers, working a total of 4 days, just to clear the rocks, stones and rubbish from the soil. This pile simply represents what they "missed." 

 

Little Feather taking a tour of the recently completed Resurrection Garden

But all praise be to the Lord on high that there actually came a day in mid-November when I stood amongst the piles of freshly extracted rubbish and random debris, sweat on my brow and covered in compost from head to toe and realised that I'd finally done it; all 7 beds were ready for planting. It's hard to put into words and convey properly what that moment felt like, but after 2 years work, suffice to say it felt good! 

Early November 2013

I'd already planted some seedlings of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, zucchinis, beetroots and broccoli in 3 of the beds that had already been completed and most of them were coming along nicely. My cucumbers began trailing up a wire lattice I had drilled into the back wall and were just starting to form fruits, but the season was getting late and temperatures were dropping and it came to the point where I'd given up hope that they would ever grow big enough to harvest. Their final nail in the coffin was when I came out one morning and found half of the vines hanging dead with a hangman's noose around their necks.

You see, in their daily attempts to recover the downed kites that land on our grass, the kids who live over the garden wall throw rocks tied to lengths of string as far as they can into our property in a series of seemingly never ending an attempts to try and hook the crashed kites then pull them back over the wall. As the rocks are pulled back towards their owner, they drag across the grass, through the garden, occasionally hook onto something of mine and then with one final heave hoist parts of my garden high into the air where they generally become hooked on a nail where they are destined to remain. Even in the design phase I knew this was going to be a potential problem for everything that grows in my garden, but unless I want to be the kind of Scrooge who tells poor kids they can't try and get their kites back when they come down in our yard (and literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of kites come down in our yard each year) then it's just something I have to learn to let go of; even if it means regularly experiencing the loss of my plants. Just chalk it up to one of the many unique (and frustrating) challenges of gardening in Banaras.

Broccoli, Eggplant and Radishes

But much to Wild Flower's elation, by the end of November I had removed most of my seedlings from our house and gotten them into the ground. Sadly the weeds were still fighting their way back into control of any space I would neglect for more than a week or two but I'm taking the long view of my battle with the weeds and feel like I'm taking ground, especially since my straw was delivered and I started heavily mulching the beds. Sadly I have little of a positive nature to say about my rubbish saga (my lovely neighbours still toss any and all of their waste into my garden; be it plastics, organics or faecal) but Kya Karna heh! What's a guy to do?

 

Little Feather harvesting her Radishes

One of the seeds that I always get Little Feather to help me plant is Radishes. I figure the connection between planting a seed and 6 months later harvesting vegetables from it can be a difficult concept to lock in place for little ones and that's why Radishes are great; they germinate within a couple of days and you're harvesting them fully grown around 5 weeks later. And there's just something about watching your kids pulling up handfuls of beautiful shiny red radishes that just fills a papa's heart with glee! So if you're wanting to encourage your kids into the garden and looking for something to grow with them I'd encourage you to stick Radishes right at the top of your list, just above snow peas, non-hearting lettuces and cherry tomates. 

Late November 2013

When it got to the end of November the garden was looking like it was on the verge of kicking into high gear. I still had to be patient with many of the slow to mature crops but it was clear that the tomatoes, lettuces, radishes and broccoli were all thriving and I was genuinely enjoying every second of being out in the garden. I'd regularly grab one or both of the kids and a coffee and come and sit up there in the early mornings and try and enjoy the fact that my son, who had only slept a handful of hours, had once again woken up and started his day before the sun had risen. And you know what? When you're sitting in a place that twelve months ago was a barren wasteland but is now filled with crops that are thriving, it actually does make the mornings for this sleep deprived father just that little bit happier.

Fire Weed..

Six guys, a bottle of highly flammable liquid, a box of matches and something that needs destroying.. a winning combination!

Sitting just outside one of the entrances to the Resurrection Garden is a horrid weed which has proved to be the bane of my barefoot existence! It's thick and bushy with razor sharp spikes and it hates me. I have no doubt in my mind that it spends the majority of it's days just dreaming up new ways of slinging it's spikes deep into the souls of my feet. We hack it back to ground level every few months but sadly this has only served to encourage it, and so it simply grows back bigger and more obnoxious each time. Other attempts to kill it have all failed dismally and so the only option left was to dig it out from the roots, an effort that proved more fun than initially expected.

We had some sweet traveler cats come along to our Community Gardening afternoon here at the River Ashram who were keen to get their hands dirty. They're both pretty interesting characters; one a Mohawk wielding media designer from Finland, the other a French law student who is taking a break from his studies so he can do what all law students do on their break and ride a bicycle across North India then all the way back to France! (So far he's clocked up an impressive 2633kms!!)

They had been hard at work for a couple of hours with Byron (our 6'5" Aussie brother whose a part of our community) when I arrived home from a Christmas party and got on the scene. This was the first time I really got a clear picture of what we were up against. The root ball was massive (about as thick as my upper leg) and bunkered down very deep. They had already dug down a couple of feet through some super tough soil and the base of the root was nowhere to be seen. This was partly because it was still well below the surface, but also because they were busy stuffing paper and sticks and other flammable objects around the base of the root with the plan of burning it out.

I have to admit, I probably would have just kept digging - but being a guy, the thought of setting something ablaze is an option too hard to pass up. Thus Oodbliav went and grabbed a bottle of the most flammable liquid he had on hand and we went to work creating a fire ball worthy of a couple of quick photos.

We ended up keeping the flame going till well after dark and it will be interesting to see what's left of it in the morning. Part of me is concerned of what ghastly abomination it might transform into if we haven't succeeded in destroying it this time round, potentially some sort of flora poltergeist out for revenge, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

It's been an interesting experience crafting this post along with these photos as the more time I spend looking at them the more anthropomorphic they become. It's a bit like cloud gazing, the longer you look the more you end up seeing. So give yourself a couple of minutes to set your peepers on the above image and tell me you don't see a woman with her hands behind her back walking up a step! Or the fourth image from the top; the tall dude wearing the low rider pants and miming at firing an arrow into the air. Or the third image from the top; a baby elephant with his trunk raised high in the air with a parrot perched atop it. Or the fifth image from the top; a statue taken from Lisa McCunes' stock pile of Gold Logies (that was probably being used to prop up a kitty litter tray or serving some other similarly noble purpose). 

So unless I'm just loosing it (which is a definitely possibility - I do have 2 kids under the age of 3 and live in Varanasi) I'm keen to hear what you see when you look deep into the flames!

A Word About Poo..

I've had a bunch of comments now from lovely folk saying that they've expected/wanted/surprised I haven't already done a post about Poo.. Yes, I'm serious. And it's true that when you live in India it doesn't take long before the quality of your bowel movements becomes a fairly acceptable topic of conversation around the dinner table. Someone you know always has diarrhea or is blocked up and it's a safe bet that how someone's poo was, is also a good indication of how they're doing in general.

So I thought I'd quench those thirsts and offer a Poo Blog (but it's probably not quite what you're thinking).

A bag of human faeces caught in our Guava Tree

I've written on more than one occasion about how much rubbish finds its way over our fence and into our gardens and the process I go through in coming to terms with it. It's something that doesn't have a foreseeable solution so I just keep up my daily routine of picking up my neighbour's rubbish from my garden and tossing it into our bin.

But look, it's one thing to be picking up your neighbour's chip packets, broken plastic bangles or even used up batteries; of course it's a waste of my time and a pain to my heart, but it becomes a different ball game all together when you find yourself picking up bags full of crap!

3 in 1 day..  rough night..

Only recently I wandered up to the Resurrection Garden with Little Feather and Wild Foot and was greeted by the sight of a plastic bag, full of human poo, that had been launched over our fence and had come to rest on what was now a crushed tomato seedling (that I had planted only days earlier!). My wife and both kids had been sick and so it'd been an exhausting week and so to be honest, I wasn't in my finest form, but the sight of my dying tomato seedling underneath a poo filled plastic bag proved to be the straw that broke this camels back.

I began hurling out my tirade of frustration to the world in the best Hindi that I could manage under such circumstances. Many of my neighbours were on their balconies and roofs and the shouting of a hairy foreigner in his Pajamas quickly attracted the attention of all within ear shot. I felt a surge of conviction that this was the moment to let my neighbours know exactly what I thought of them! And so in a strong and ridiculous accent of an Australian trying to sound North Indian, I conjured up the best Hindi I could and managed to sputter out "I'm not happy!"

Look, it wasn't quite as profound as a Jed Bartlett speech.. In fact, I'm sure it was rather humorous for my neighbours to see me flustered and thus completely unable to string a simple sentence together, but I did manage to ham it up a bit and get across the frustration of my vegetable garden being used as their toilet. 

I proceeded to ask who was creator of my latest inheritance, and it was like a scene from a movie with every finger confidentially pointing towards every other house but their own, and so this offender remains at large (though I suspect all my neighbours have been guilty of this at some point). 

Wild Flower often tells me that I should just return it via airmail (ie; straight in through the lounge room windows) but we're all to aware that in any war involving flying bags of faeces, well, no one really comes out victorious do they (especially when they command all the high ground!).

But it does underscore a more serious issue that's wide spread here in India, and that is that 2.5 billion people on our planet currently lack access to a toilet or basic sanitation. Only the other day a friends whose lived here for many years told me that Germany had given Varanasi a 100 million dollar grant to provide adequate sewage infrastructure to the city, yet where has this money gone? Primarily into the back pockets of high ranking city officials, who I guess are kind of like the contents of a sewage pipe when you consider that their greed and corruption continues to deny meeting the basic needs of those living in extreme poverty.

So now I'm trying to reorient my mind. To see that inherent within each plastic bag of poo that's crushing a new seedling in my garden is the out workings of the corruption and evil that results in basic human needs not being met. And look, I'm happy to admit that I'm not there yet. It's not easy, in fact it's still soul crushing to see so much hard work being shat on (literally) by the very people I'm eager to share my harvests with, especially when they can clearly see where it's going and knowing that there are other disposal options, but trying to see the bigger picture and is helping me reconcile some of the heart ache I go through each and every time I discover a fresh deposit. 

While doing some reading about this issue of sanitation, I came across the above clip which encouraged me (and gave me a good laugh) that work is being done to address the issue of inadequate sanitation, and even if I can't imagine the process being even close to completed in my lifetime, it's good to know that bringing an end to the war of flying bags of poo is on the agenda!

Compost; A Love Story..

So by now you've probably worked out that I really like compost. I know it's a weird thing to say, it's a bit like admitting that you're a fan of collecting toe nails, but if you've never dug your bare hands down into a pile of thick, dark, well decomposed, sweet smelling compost, well, you simply haven't lived!

Below is a fairly recent pic I took of the 2 compost bins we've been using here on the property for a number of years. We have a solid supply of good quality ingredients to add to the piles but as I've spoken about before in my post about experimenting with the Berkley Method Of Hot Composting, they just weren't making the grade. The stone slabs look beautiful but they don't allow for air to enter via the sides and air is crucial for the decomposing process. If oxygen cannot penetrate the pile then it becomes anaerobic (meaning that the microorganisms responsible for decomposition process can't survive and thus decomposition grinds to a halt) and unless you want to engage in anaerobic composting (which is possible but not desirable given our circumstances) then the stone slabs simply weren't the ideal way to go.

Last year we left the bays filled with a variety of good things for almost 6 months and came to the end of that period only to discover that they had become so compacted that the majority of the ingredients simply failed to decompose at all. Now one incredibly simple way to counteract this is simply to get in there with a pitch fork and turn the pile a couple of times a week so as to allows air to reenter in amongst all the ingredients, however we have the problem of being a rather small and therefore time-poor community; meaning that we have plenty of responsibilities and not much spare time, let alone enough to dedicate to turning a compost pile every other day. So I began to dream of different ways that we could improve our set up that would give us better results without having to invest more time into it on a regular basis and ended up stumbling into an incredibly simple, extremely cheap and super effective method that could be reproduced anywhere by anyone.

The above photo is the area we're dealing with. The existing stone Compost bays are straight a head, there are piles of broken bricks and stone slabs everywhere, and even though it's all but invisable in the picture, much of the ground is actually paved with smaller stone pieces which have become buried under years of dirt and leaves. We spent a couple of hours clearing the space (which required some serious heavy lifting) and then drove four metal poles into the ground, roughly 1.5m wide and 1.8m long, which would act as the front corners of the new Compost bays. 

I chose to use a reasonably thick gauge wire for the frame as this would have the strength to support the weight of everything we would want to throw into it whilst still having plenty of space to allow as much air as possible to penetrate in from the sides. We drilled this into the brick wall at the rear and linked it with strips of wire to the post at the front and at that point had a very simple compost bay setup.

One thing to consider is that I could have chosen to use only 3 posts for the front so that the middle wire would have acted as a central dividing wall for both bays, but getting air into the pile was the main objective and so using 4 post means that there is a 30cm gap between both piles and thus plenty of room for air to have access.

Next up my dear Aussie brother Nelson and I spent a long and hot summer afternoon drilling hundreds of holes in lengths of PVC pipe. I had given lots of thought about how to try and increase air flow to the center of the pile (the most likely place to become starved of oxygen) and had decided that one option would be to run a couple of lengths of pipe from the outside, straight through the center of the pile. This way oxygen can always be moving through those hard to reach places and keep those microorganisms partying. We lined the pipes up and attached them in a roughly even fashion so as to get air flow through the four quarters of the piles, but my advice today would be to scrap having any pipes up high and instead have them all in the lower half of the pile as that's where it will become the most compacted and the natural airflow will be the most restricted.

I had intended to attach another wire section to the front of each bay, but the guy at the store who sold me the wire did the dirty and charged me for 10m but only gave me 8m, so I didn't have enough wire to complete it on that day and figured I would get back into it soon. However, as time got further and further away from me, I found that it hasn't really been necessary to have a front as we haven't had enough going into the piles for them to spill out onto the path in front but instead they've easily grown higher and higher without having any problems.

We initially set up these new Compost Bays in late August 2013, it's now 3 months later and as you can see the new bays are doing pretty darn well. Some of the pipes broke during this time due to a problem which I doubt many of you will experience (ie; Monkeys jumping up and down on them!), but it is worth trying to make sure that the pipes are resting on the compost in the center without significant gaps beneath them so that they're not trying to support the weight of all that is above it as I suspect this would also cause them to break.

 

To the best of my knowledge, not once during these past three months have either of the piles been turned or aerated by any other means than that which we initially designed. Just this week I finished building my final Vegie Plot in the Resurrection Garden and was keen to pump it full of compost so I pulled out the pipes through the sides of the 2nd bay, racked back the top layer of leaves and other recently added ingredients and was blown away with what lay beneath.

Only 3 months after first building these new bays, the rear one gave out 10+ wheelbarrow loads of gorgeous, gregarious, glorious Compost! All of which went straight into our organic Vegetable Gardens and means that the leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, garden waste, etc. etc. etc. which would otherwise go onto the side of the road, the incinerator or the Ganges, is now enriching the earth, helping feed humanity with nutritious and healthy food and investing back into nature. I really couldn't be happier with how it's turned out.

So if you have a compost pile somewhere out back and the thought of turning it every other day doesn't seem to appeal to you, would it be worth revamping your existing Composting system with any of these brainlessly simple ideas? When compared with last year's stretch of 6 months composting with virtually nothing to show for it, well, it's as my sweet Winnie Wild Flower likes to say, "The pudding is in the cake!"