Not written by a Wagoneer. Originally posted on Mother Earth News – written by Jenna Woginrich, of Cold Antler Farm. Fair to say, a kindred spirit – especially in the longing for digging in the dirt and loving on animals. Enjoy!
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There’s a condition that inflicts some of us and I can only describe as Barnheart. Barnheart is a sharp, targeted, depression that inflicts certain people (myself being one of them) as harsh and ugly as a steak knife being shoved into an uncooked turkey. It’s not recognized by professionals or psychoanalysts (yet), but it’s only a matter of time before it’s a household diagnose. Hear me out. It goes like this:
Barnheart is that sudden overcast feeling that hits you while at work or in the middle of the grocery store checkout line. It’s unequivocally knowing you want to be a farmer — and for whatever personal circumstances — cannot be one just yet. So there you are, heartsick and confused in the passing lane, wondering why you cannot stop thinking about heritage livestock and electric fences. Do not be afraid. You have what I have. You are not alone.
You are suffering from Barnheart.
It’s a dreamer’s disease: a mix of hope, determination, and grit. Specifically targeted at those of us who wish to god we were outside with our flocks, feed bags, or harnesses and instead are sitting in front of a computer screens. When a severe attack hits, it’s all you can do to sit still. The room gets smaller, your mind wanders, and you are overcome with the desire to be tagging cattle ears or feeding pigs instead of taking conference calls. People at the water cooler will stare if you say these things aloud. If this happens, just segue into sports and you’ll be fine.
The symptoms are mild at first. You start glancing around the internet at homesteading forums and cheese making supply shops on your lunch break. You go home after work and instead of turning on the television — you bake a pie and read about chicken coop plans. Then some how, somewhere, along the way — you realize you are happiest when in your garden or collecting eggs. When this happens, man oh man, it’s all down hill from there. When you accept the only way to a fulfilling life requires tractor attachments and a septic system, it’s too late. You’ve already been infected. If you even suspect this, you may have early-onset Barnheart.
But do not panic, my dear friends. Our rural ennui has a cure! It’s a self-medication that that can only be administered by direct, tangible, and intentional actions. If you find yourself overcome with the longings of Barnheart, simply step outside; get some fresh air, and breathe. Go back to your desk and finish your tasks knowing that tonight you’ll take notes on spring garden plans and start perusing those seed catalogs. Usually, simple, small actions in direction of your own farm can be the remedy. In worst-case scenarios you might find yourself resorting to extreme measures. These situations call for things like a day called in sick to do nothing but garden, muck out chicken coops, collect fresh eggs and bake fresh bread. While that may seem drastic, understand this is a disease of inaction, darling. It hits us the hardest when we are farthest from our dreams. So to fight it we must simply have faith that some day 3:47 p.m. will mean grabbing a saddle instead of a spreadsheet. Believing this is even possible is halfway to healthy. I am a high-functioning sufferer of Barnheart. I can keep a day job, long as I know my night job involves livestock.
Barnheart is a condition that needs smells and touch and crisp air to heal. If you find yourself suffering from such things, make plans to visit an orchard, dairy farm, or pick up that beat guitar. Busy hands will get you on the mend. Small measures, strong convictions, good coffee, and kind dogs will see you through. I am certain of these things.
So when you find yourself sitting in your office, school, or café chair and your mind wanders to a life of personal freedom, know that feeling is our collective disease. If you can almost taste the bitter smells of manure and hay in the air and feel the sun on your bare arms, even on the subway, you are one of us and have hope for recovery. Like us, you try and straighten up in your ergonomic desk chair but really you want to be reclining in the bed of a pickup truck. We get that.
And hey, do not lose the faith or fret about the current circumstances. Everything changes. And if you need to stand in the light of an old barn to lift your spirits, perhaps some day you will. Every day. For some, surely this is the only cure.
We’ll get there. In the meantime, let us just take comfort in knowing we’re not alone. And maybe take turns standing up and admitting we have a problem.
Hello. My name is Jenna. And I have Barnheart.
if you thought that i typed that blog title with the “caps lock” on by accident, you’re right. but then i corrected it, and then i thought about it, and then i re-wrote it the same way. ’cause it’s contrary to how you would normally write a blog title. kind of like the contrary farmer. this guy is throwing the political heat like nolan ryan once did.
bringing the noise and the funk
check it out. http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/
manure movers.
whenever we have visitors to the farm, i like to thank them for their contributions. in the toilets. our composting toilets. these toilets are “harvested” (by hand, with shovel) every 3-4 months, further composted (to kill off any harmful pathogens), and spread on our pastures to enrich the forage for our goats. however, living on a bus does not allow for the acculumation of 3-4 months worth of poop.
rethinking waste.
expensive sewage plants and septic systems on a large scale lead to many of today’s problems such as water shortages, water pollution, and reliance on chemical fertilizers.and our standard toilets consume 18.5 gallons per day per person. but our ma-maws and pa-paws weren’t dependent on city-run infrastructure to clean up our sh…tuff. (my grandma had a wonderful story about a time she when she was a little girl trapped in the ol’ outhouse after being chased by a big burly buck.)
but really – what comes in must come out. through nutrient cycles, we are intrinsically and symbiotically connected to plants. “Ecological toilets give eating and pooping a new importance . . . Instead of participating in a system that wastes precious resources, we can be making rich humus and fertilizer each day. We can live our lives knowing that we contribute valuable nutrients to the earth, that we use them in our yards and community gardens and help plants grow.” - Greywater Action
on a bus?
as if the world didn’t already think us mad, we’ll be bussing around with buckets. perhaps like this $25 (or cheaper if parts are salvaged) sawdust toilet – from chapter 8 of the beloved humanure handbook:
yeah . . . awesome.
So pick up a copy of Jospeh Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook at your local library. or read Greywater Action’s Guide to Composting Toilets explains the components of a composting toilet that make legit humanure.
be a party pooper.
life on a farm.
living on a farm ruins a person. to drink in the sunshine. to dig in the dirt. it’s intoxicating. but ruins a person.
of course, not all farming is romantic – when reliant upon government subsidies to monocrop, when the rains prevent the harvest of this years corn, when beholden to the bank for the land you tend and love. but to work to sustain family, to share burdens and blessings with neighbors. no 9-5. no rushhour commutes. no must-see tv to numb the mind til tomorrow becomes another yesterday. we have a monk of a friend who has decided he must be medicated in order to function our there in society. i’d rather go crazy.
as i biked to a meeting to discuss 990s, i realized once again- i don’t ever want a job. stuffed into business suits. cramped into high heels. i don’t want to fill out tax forms to make the work i do legitimate in the eyes of the government. 990s and 1023s. i hope that if people see fit to donate to a cause, a project, a person they believe in and love – tax deductibility is not the incentive.
all this to say, the Waste-Not Wagon is an anti-profit. contributions to the bus won’t receive tax-deductible credit. we are not a 501c3 or 501c4. nor do we intend to be. we are not in this to make money. we are in this because we have passion burning in our hearts. in this day and age of medicated consumerism, we need to burn.
reclaiming the waste.
we are a church beholden to the pocketbook and politicos. as christians we should not be throwing our money at causes hoping for a high five from the
government so we can stay safely seated in our own self-righteousness on sunday mornings.
i don’t say this to be anarchist. i’m not a member of the TEA party. and i’m not a bleeding heart liberal.
i’m just trying to love God and love my neighbor. and sometimes the government gets in the way.
“if [the law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then i say, break the law. let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Civil Disobedience
other friends in the anti-profit world:
“The Vulture is a scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on the carcasses of dead animals. It finds its meals using its keen vision and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gasses produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals to move through the air, flapping its wings infrequently. It roosts in large community groups. It nests in caves, hollow trees, or thickets. It has very few natural predators. The vulture receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.” -wikipedia
…we circle below, wandering, soaring. with hopes reclaiming the waste of this nation. what others find dead, decaying, and useless, we find alive, beautiful, and useful. what others throw, we catch before hitting the ground.
…we circle below with respect for what creation provides us. we know that we live in neccesary relation to the natural world. we take only what sustains us. and we leave anything not for us. we call on our brothers and sisters from a far to take part in the feast of our provisions.
…we circle below and rest when we need it. we reside in spaces made vacant by empire. we reconcile abandoned places with the green that once adorned it. we live simply.
…we circle below with acknowledgement of man-made political systems but swear allegiance only to the Divine Kingdom. we resist the oppresive powers of greed, pride, and hatred. we mourn with hurting peoples and the lands they have lived on.
…we circle below with the Sun, the constant light, shining through our wings.
circle.
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she totally fell for it
- yo homies. i know it’s been a while since i rapped at you, but dude’s been busy. what with getting engaged, pecans, prepping the bus (only to break down), the holidays, and just plain keepin’ it real, there’s not a whole lot of time to be blog posting. but now that things have slowed down a bit, i can get back to why they really keep me on board here: my epic blog posts. so get ready, because this post is going to come hard and fast.
- today’s topic: no-till gardening, what it is, why it’s important, and why i believe it embodies the spirit of “waste not”. for the sake of convenience, i’m going oversimplify things and cut through minor semantic nuances that could make this post just plain confusing. first, a review.
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till, sucker!
what’s the first thing gardening books tell you to do when you want to start a garden? till it. they usually tell you to use a rototiller to prep the beds so you can plant into it, like this guy——>
- well…that’s fine and all…until you multiply the number of people doing this into the hundreds of thousands, for years and years using bigger and badder equipment:
moldboard plow doing what it does best
- until you run into this:
- whoa. that got intense, fast. but that’s what tilling does to the soil. it completely overturns the top 4-6 inches of soil, aerating it, clearing off whatever is growing, improving the drainage capacity, and giving your plants a jumpstart on the weeds…and it does it all at intensely fast. but as with all things done for human convenience, somebody or something has to pay the price. in the process of tilling, the life in the soil is destroyed, soil tends to compact over time, erosion increases, water holding capacity decreases over time, organic matter gets burned up quickly, massive amounts of carbon is released, weed seeds are brought up from under the soil, and it usually requires a cheap energy source. when you combine all these things together, you get “worn out” soil that needs increasing mechanization and the addition of chemical fertility to make it habitable for vegetation. yipes.
nobody likes the dust bowl
total anarchy
- for a good chunk of people, the choice has been bigger machines, using chemicals up the ying yang, and sowing robot seeds. for others, anarcho-primitivism. for me, i feel drawn towards the “no-till” alternative. instead of flying off the handle with some tirade about the glories of no-till, i’ll just tell you about my experience with it at the World Hunger Relief farm.
- starting with a weedy, cement-soil field, i (well, me and my dad) spread compost on3 50ft beds, laid about 4 inches of mulch, took a huge bar and smashed open holes, then transplanted melons, egg plant, and zucchini into them. the mulch kept the weeds down (so i didn’t have to till it). it also helped keep the soil moist, and reduced erosion.
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human powered manure spreader
cool hat, man
- while these vegetables were growing, i prepared 3 more beds by solarizing them laying transparent plastic over them, then letting the sun bake all the weeds and weed seeds without having to till. also, once the growing vegetables were past their prime, i relay planted a cover crop into them. this will build the organic matter in the soil, helping it to retain water better, build up the microbial life in the soil, which will help later mineralize the nutrients from the compost/organic matter that isn’t readily available to plants, thus reducing fertilizer needs! booyeah!
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hairy vetch relay planted into aging broccoli (in the solarized bed)
peas growing amongst sorghum-sudan grass stubble
- After the cover crop had grown big, i chopped it down (by hand, oh yeah) and planted directly into it. the remaining stubble acts as a mulch and also will be broken down and mineralized into nutrients for the plants, while also improving soil texture.
- in my opinion, planting using the no-till method in tandem with cover cropping, mulching, solarizing, and mowing makes a lot of sense. ideally, after doing this for a while, the soil will have been improved to the point where it won’t need fertilizer and will yield just as much or more than conventional methods. plus, it takes less labor and energy.
- and that’s where “waste-not” factors in. most commercial producers rely heavily on cheap fuel to power their machinery to cultivate the land and they rely on cheap fertilizer to meet yield requirements. planting using the no-till method empowers people to move away from heavy machine use and focuses on building and maintaining healthy soils. my no-till garden is definitely not producing on a commercial scale, but i would like to believe that with more time and management effort it could be possible to rely on human power and biological processes to grow enough food to provide for a community’s nutrition needs. could it be possible to cut out wasteful energy use, depend on local resources, and to creatively live off the land you live on? i hope so. god, i hope so.
an update.
to be blunt, the bus is at a standstill. not forever – God willing – but the engine’s shot. when we started dreaming about this whole bus thing, we knew there would be stumbling blocks along the road – so we dreamed beyond the bus. of starting a farm(s). until the day when we are blessed with millions of dollars to purchase land, we farm the little plots of land where we find ourselves.
farmer amber (our trailer park diva). and yojimbo (ie big papa).
ethel acre.
since moving away from the farm farm where we all began, i – the raggedy one with braids – work a wee bit of land in the city in betwixt planning/planting gardens with UGC. this bit of backyard i call ethel acre. it’s not an acre. but it’s mildly alliterative. last night alexandria (the farm’s monty python bunny) took up residence at ethel acre. she’s a castaside 4-H project of some neighboring child and never took to farm folks other than leaving puncture wounds in her victims. so i’ve adopted her. with the intention of free ranging her in my backyard. and someday, on the bus.
what’s so great about rabbits?!
sure, they’re cute and fuzzy, as little domesticated buggers. and there’s a great veggie tales song about a giant chocolate bunny and idolatry. but those are tangential to raising rabbits.
- meat. yup. used to hunt the wild ones. now we domesticate ‘em and breed ‘em for efficient meat production. particularly good for subsistence living in small spaces. and in developing countries. and it’s a good source of protein while being low in fat.
- fur/wool. the skin can be tanned and dehaired as leather (called vellum). or kept as a pelt. angora varieties have hair that can be spun into wool and wonderful sweaters. or into hats – like the one my grandma gave my mama and creeped her out.
yup.
poop. free fertilizer for the garden. with high NPK content. extra nutrients for my worms. (alexandria’s hutch is set atop our vermicomposting).
thus far, alexandria’s brought me joy through extensive attempts to herd her while she’s free ranging in the living room and the backyard as the neighbors look on (they already think i’m crazy because i clamber about the roof, sweeping leaves off and collect bagged leaves for mother nature’s mulch). i’m turning into the raggedy rabbit lady.
backyard bunny lovin’
as if i’m not peculiar enough, plans are underway for a potluck party complete with fire, food and some barry white (and/or manilow). honored guests: yojimbo (the farm’s buck) and our little alexandria. rabbits kindle in 28-35 days. and then we’ll have ourselves some baby bunnies.
the by-product of backyard bunny lovin'.
on a final note, i discovered one more use for waste vegetable oil: miracle medicine for earmites. doing my best to have a barnyard in my backyard while being extremely frugal, i took to swabbing alexandria’s ear with w.v.o. to suffocate the little buggers.
once again justified for keeping around an extra jug of w.v.o. waste not . . .
on mlk day 2010 – monday, january 18 – the waste-not wagon and her wagoneers will be taking part in the day of community service. led by the waco arts initiative, a mural will be painted across the ceiling of the bus. our paint brushes shall be led by the spirit to paint perhaps a scene of subterranean soil science or words about wagon dreams or a manifesto of a mad farmer or some such nonsense.
anyways, grab a paint brush, your creativity cap (and perhaps an apron), and join us. or just come find out what the bus is all about. and be the dream.
location: world hunger relief farm. 356 spring lake road. waco, tx.
when: january 18, 2010. 10am – 2pm. lunch provided at 11:30am.
why: need you ask? for – basically – the best time of your life.
if plans had gone according to our own strict schedule on the road, we’d have had the joy and blessing of meeting with/meeting for the first time many a friend across the southern coast. along the way, there would’ve been much reading of stories aloud, sewing of curtains, crafting of save-the-date cards, singing of christmas tunes, baking of beans and brewing of coffee, tanning of roadkill(?!), and feeding of our ferious little bunny – alexandria – and she in turn feeding the little red wigglers beneath her. but our wee wagon had something to say and God listened. and decided to reroute our course.
rather we started our bumpy journey at 5am, before the sun took to traveling. we nustled together for warmth, the bus-buddy system. (we’re so dang sustainable we don’t have heat on the bus . . .) by 6am, we were haphazardly smoking up the road looking a little cheech-n-chong. not good.
the wagon journey ended in hillsboro, texas – home of the splendiforous outlet malls. and home to a texas-grown shipley’s donuts shop. so rather than swipe and spend we dumpstered and consumed. then headed to the bus to sing songs until the good Lord brought us some spare vehicles and sent us to where we now are. off the road.
lesson learned: prayers don’t permit procrastination. but keep on praying. the bus is still in disrepair up in hillsboro. at walmart no less. for this we pray to the Lord: Lord hear our prayer.
lyrical credit to mr. delaurell. expressing the joy shared by us all today.
and i suppose i would rather find happiness in a broken horn than a warm gun – but we had our fair share of little miss sunshine moments today as the horn in the wagon decided to toot whenever she pleased.
for instance, when the wagon was stuck in the mud. and her tires spun. beep beep. beep beep. and when the tractor – who decided to help out our dear wagon – her tires did spin too. beep beep. beep beep. and when our farm truck – who decided to help out our dear john and our dear wagon – her tires did spin as well. beep beep. beep beep.
that’s one wagon. one tractor. one truck. all stuck in the mud. and 6-or-so young strappin’ lads and one not-so-fair lady out a-pushin’ and a-gruntin’ to no avail. until mister lone star propane in his big texas-sized truck hauled us all out to happiness.
this horn also had a tendency to spark and smoke while attempting to manuever the wagon. this is not happiness. so we discovered some texas-sized tools. and dismantled it. and discontinued the buzzer that decided never to quiet itself.
so is a day in the life of a wagoneer.
when not mucking it up in the mucky muck, i’ve busied myself with pandering to politicos and brown-nosing to bureaucrats. it’s bad for my soul. but must be done to be street legal, legit.
thankfully, the rest of our hearts are renewed daily with little wagon triumphs: when she starts. when her tail-lights work. when her oil is filtered. we laugh and hoot and holler. and then go eat lunch in our woodstove-warmed nook. delighted by feasts of greens and beans and ‘maters. while the wind from the north descends into december, nipping at our noses. and we set our sights on the road ahead.
blessings. and God’s good graces to us all. hallelujah.
bethel
lucas
neal
motorgardenmadman
southerngoodness
