Everyone Poops

No one likes to talk about it, but yes, just like the title of a very great children’s book, “Everyone Poops.” There is no escaping that pooping is inextricably tied with eating, and not just in the way you’re thinking about.

This weekend a group of Oberlin College students joined me in the fields for a 10/10/10 service project. This was part of a global work-party movement on October 10, 2010 with 7000 events in 188 countries to build a carbon-neutral world.

Our project at George Jones Farm took part in age-old seasonal farm ritual. We spread manure on the fields as the season is winding down, to compost through the freezing and thawing of winter and enrich the soil for spring planting. The farm was the lucky beneficiary of two unusual local sources of this black gold: some alpacas nearby and some sheep that live in Oberlin generously donated their gifts to the fields. With pitchforks in hand we painted some of the fields with a fragrant but not malodorous mixture of manure and bedding. As with all compost, the ideal is a 50/50 mix of carbon supplied by straw, wood shavings, sawdust, or dried leaves and nitrogen from animal manure, food scraps, or any other “juicy” green plant matter. The bedding not only supplies carbon but also soaks the most valuable part of an animal’s “waste” – its urine. Urine is loaded with nitrogen and a potent fertilizer. Want to make a bold move in your own garden? Pee on it! Your plants will thrive.

That we discuss feces and urine, human or otherwise, as “waste” shows a fundamental gap in our relation with the natural and the agricultural world. As local farmer/philosopher Gene Logsdon points out in his book Holy Shit, language and culture once understood manure to be a valuable commodity. The droppings of horses pulling carriages down the roads of yore were “road apples,” to be harvested just like any other crop. In China, when one was a guest for a meal at someone’s house it was considered a matter of good manners to use the toilet after the meal. If one had after all received the gift of a meal from one’s host, one should likewise leave your host a “gift.”

Why spread manure as part of a day of service to reduce carbon emissions? Animals and plants have co-evolved into one seamless tapestry of life and the animal and bacterial processes that distill into animal manure are vital for plants’ health in the fields that can’t be fully replicated by inorganic industrial fertilizers. Poop = No factory using fossil fuels to churn out industrial fertilizers. Poop = No transportation of said fertilizers across the country. Poop on the fields = No contamination of waterways and storm drain systems. Spreading poop by hand with lots of friends = No tractor needed that day to spread the manure. Also, it was lots of fun, which is priceless. A big thanks to our student volunteers.