Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

> We sometimes let ourselves become paranoid by reports of people getting 
> terribly sick due to some pathogens, but deep down I always know there is 
> no problem because I grew up on a small farm more than 50 years ago. 
> There was an outdoor toilet which was basically just a hole in the ground. 
> My grandfather would empty out that hole and pour the contents, which was 
> a disgusting soup of pure feces with nothing else, on the dung heap on top 
> of all the bedding from the cow shed and the pigsty.  There was a terrible 
> stench for a day or two, but after that it returned to normal.  After the 
> war, my grandfather was too poor to buy fertilizers and all fertility came 
> from that dung heap.  Except for salt, pepper and fish, the family 
> produced everything it ate.  I don’t remember that any member of our 
> extended family ever needed a doctor in those days.  That only came after 
> the farm was abandoned and people moved to more sanitary conditions in the 
> city.
>
> My favorite spot as a small kid was a bench in the narrow space between 
> the cow shed and the dung heap.  When the afternoon sun burnt down on the 
> heap, the air would vibrate in the heat and buzz with the sound of 
> innumerable insects.  I would breathe in the odorous air and be happy.
>
> Dieter Brand
> Portugal

One more small detail in connection with our gut flora perhaps. It is at 
present thought that on average we have a kilo or two of bacteria inside us 
of some 170 different species. But there are at least 350 species that can 
be found in human guts looked at globally. The exact species mix differs 
from place to place and from community to community.

This should make it obvious that taking just lactic acid bacilli after a 
course of anti biotics leaves something short? "Probiotics" may possibly be 
useful but they never consist of 170 different species. So what is up? How 
do we get recolonised after we killed all the useful stuff inside us?

I have thought about this long and came to the conclusion that we must be 
reinfecting ourselves from the people around us. Not everybody washes all 
the microbes of their hands every time they go to the toilet. (Shockingly 
disgusting I know) They touch things that we touch and crudely said, we are 
eating shit all the time and exchange our bugs in the process too. The best 
we can hope for is to have healthy neighbors not on any medication and with 
a good patrimony of useful bugs.
That is as it should be but with the world at large on a great variety of 
human made chemicals (typically not stereo- specific as is always the case 
in nature) it is not unexpected that diseases break out.

Anyway, I think that as long as this is completely overlooked there is 
little point to be afraid of "pathogens" in our own waste. If it came out of 
us it must be already in us. No point in being stupidly dirty but we can 
easily go too far and do more bad than good.
Often fear is what we should fear the most.
john