Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["elderberryjam" <elderberryjam@zippytech.com>]

I just caught up with the past month of posts. Someone recommended Joel 
Salatan's book, "You Can Farm," to me several years ago. I started reading 
it and put it down when I grew tired of the political speeches. For the most 
part, I agreed with him - just got tired of reading it. Recently I picked it 
up again and read a little between some other books, and it was more 
palatable that way. Reading excerpts to my husband, he commented that Joel 
is very money-oriented in his approach. My husband is a little more 
interested in sustainance farming or community farming. But I have to say 
that Joel, and others, like a local organic farmer I've bought veggi's from 
at the farmer's market, have me thinking out of the box. I just wish I had 
the time to get my chickens and ducks enclosed so I could put in a garden 
this year. I am helplessly dependent on those around me who don't work 
full-time as I do, and must wait for them to do the real labor at their 
convenience, with the meager promise of all-the-eggs-they-could-desire, and 
free helpings to the vegetables "I" plant. I find myself wondering, "Why 
don't THEY own the chickens?" I guess someone has to own them - might as 
well be me. I guess someone has to take responsibility for putting in a 
garden and "owning" it, even if everyone else contributes as much, if not 
more than I do.

On occaision I talk about my animals at work. Nurses on a cardiac unit 
aren't really used to one of their own being a "farmer," which is what I 
refer to myself as, much to the amusement of a couple of other "farmers," 
who don't use my terminology. One of the other nurses, and another nurse 
practioner both have donkeys. Last week my unit manager caught me passing a 
filled syringe of Ivermectin to a nurse's aid who has goats. I labeled it. I 
tried to explain to the nurse manager that it was labeled, because it was a 
filled syringe, and he laughed and said, "It's OKAY. I know you're a 
farmer... no big deal."

Two Mays ago, I flew to Arizona to my oldest son's graduation (at age 16 he 
chose to live with his dad, and his dad moved to Phoenix). On the way out, I 
sat next to a young, nervous man going to his daughter's graduation, and 
talking with him, didn't notice the view so much. On the way back, I watched 
the landscape change below me....first the scorched, cracking earth of New 
Mexico, fading slowly into Pac Man's eating farm houses across Kansas and 
Oklahoma, fading slowly into more and more green of Missouri and Illinois, 
and finally into the patchwork quilt of Ohio and PA, to a finale plane 
landing beside a rainbow in Pittsburgh. The businessman sitting next to me 
on this trip was so entrenched in his laptop, he didn't even notice, until I 
said, "Look out the window. There's a rainbow," and he looked up and smiled, 
and then pulled out his cell phone to call his wife. As we got off the 
plane, a woman says, "I don't know why I come back to this gawdawful place. 
Always raining. Do you know that Pittsburgh only has about 31 sunny days in 
a year? I like Arizona lots better!" I was hoping there wasn't a sneer in my 
smile at her, as after only a few days visit, I was all too glad to leave 
the glimmering hot 111 sun bowl far behind me! And I like rain. I watch the 
Ohio River rise, hoping it will finally flood enough to wipe out the gaming 
casino and dog tracks... not nice of me, I know. It did a few years ago, but 
they had the money to rebuild, much to my disappointment.

Mitch's computer antics amused me, as a change in reading. I wonder, did you 
find a useful program? I use a peice of paper with lines to show what I 
planted where, and it works for me. 5 years going, I still haven't more than 
cracked a book on Java and HTML to figure out how to make my farm's website. 
I should. Plotting a garden almost sounds fun, but I am trying to discover 
the use in it other than amusement. But then, amusement is worth a lot of 
money. To some.

And Barbara...asking to be kicked off a forum. Why not just leave? I'm not 
saying that as in "I don't want you here," but as in, "Why ask to be 
rejected?" I have left several forums that didn't float my boat, where some 
people disagreed with my point of view. I recently left one I even  really 
liked because a thread got started on something I ethically disapprove of 
deeply, and I just didn't want to read it and delete it any more. I belong 
to too many forums anyway, and despite liking it, I decided it added too 
much negativity to my day. The internet is, as a Friend put it to me, 
"ether." After a few years, if it can't provide entertainment or education, 
it isn't worth my time.

Back to traveling...the first couple of times I went to Arizona, it was a 
road trip, and my first times across the country. I found myself wanting to 
look at the soil each time I got out of the vehicle, and even to reach down 
and feel it. I even had this wierd desire to take my shoes off and walk on 
it with bare feet. I can't describe the need. I found myself trying to 
figure out how just east of the Rockies, at an in-law relative's house, 
where there were prickley things everywhere. The desire wasn't there so much 
on subsequent trips. I wondered if this desire was something instinctual. It 
was to the degree that if there was a parking lot at a rest area, I had to 
walk across it to find some of the "real" land of the area. It was an odd, 
irresistable compulsion.

Does anyone else experience this in their travels?

Gwen in Ohio