farmdoc's blog post number 16

I’ve been trying for years now, and I just can’t make it. I read the books, I obsess about the ingredients, I try my hardest. But still it doesn’t work. I’m talking compost here. Right now my compost bin is 75% full of fantastic stuff – moist, rich, luscious, earthy – but I thank the myriad earthworms in there for that. In other words, what’s going on in my bin is worm farming (which is a cool process) and not composting (which is a warm one). Because the end result is similar, maybe I shouldn’t care. But I do. Especially because this is International Composting Awareness Week – which runs from Sunday 4th to Saturday 10th May. Now there are international days and weeks and months for this and that – mostly important social or environmental matters whose profiles need raising. But compost is different. It is seminal, primal, overarching. In Genesis we read, ‘From dust we come, to dust we return’. So no wonder that wag – I can’t recall who – when asked to state the meaning of life in one word, shouted back ‘Compost!’ Me? I’ll keep trying, carefully checking the temperature of the bin and attending to my carbon to nitrogen ratio. But increasingly I’m thinking that the best compost I’ll ever make will be after I’m gone.