The Winning Locavore

     Fall fell with a heavy curtain of rain on October 1^st. The summer play is over, folks. Gather your toys and dig out the sweaters. Within the week, Smokey Bear, who stands vigil over his sign at the Forest Service indicating the level of fire danger spring through fall, packed it in. The sign is in the shed and he's fluffing his pillows, prepping for hibernation. Looks like this could be a longer one than we've seen in recent years.

     Usually we gardeners have a lovely October in which to gradually say goodbye to another productive season. Not this year. Summer crops are pulled, tender winter crops covered against excessive rain and cover crops planted between storms and in soggy soil. Not good. But, you take what Mother Nature gives you. It's better than no rain and high fire danger.

     I've been focusing on compost, sifting the last of what was stuffed into my compost “bin” last fall. Life's circumstances prevented me from finishing it in late spring, so the remainder was especially nice, rich compost. We're well set for next season.

 

"Yuck!," said the woman, "Yum!" said the worms.

My rather “institutional” looking compost bin was built from concrete blocks, many left from our first year here when we built a lean-to shed of them behind the tacky trailer we lived in while building our house. It works pretty well. The “lid” is part of the old metal roof from the Community Center down the road. It intensifies the heat during summer. Snakes love it.

     It occurred to me the other day that the compost pile is an even better locavore than any of us humans because it continues the cycle ad infinitum. Its diet is seasonal, just like ours, but a step ahead. Right now is its Thanksgiving as it gorges on huge piles leafy plants, vines (hops, beans, porcelain berry, etc.), and what remains of flowers, fallen, wormy apples and shriveled veggies. Doesn't sound like much of a feast to us, but the worms love it and are at the top of their game right now. When you get right down to it, all that rich humus we sift is worm poop. And it, in turn, is the soil's favorite food.

     The compost's seasonal diet starts in spring when lots of freshly-cut perennial grass heats things up after a cold, slow winter. Throughout the summer fresh produce trimmings from the garden and kitchen compost bucket are layered in. By mid to late summer most of the contributions are brown and dry, except for the kitchen buckets bringing “wetter stuff.” It all perks up when the gardens are ripped out at the end of summer.

     The bulk of this feast is trimmings from our gardens (flower, vegetable and greenhouse) or from what we bring home from summer and winter farmers' markets. Some of it spends its entire life cycling through an area of less than a quarter acre, year after year, year-round (thanks to my husband's winter garden). Now that takes the locavore prize. No Hundred-Mile Diet challenge for the compost pile; how about 100 feet, garden to house with the compost pile smack dab in between.

     We humans may beat our chests about being locavores, but compost quietly wins the contest – over and over and over again.