Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>]

On 08/30/2011 04:49 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> Sorry Paul, I don't believe there is actually a way back for these "you
> don't actually drink the milk do you" people. It is not just the egg that
> comes out of the back end of a chicken that freaks these people out. I was
> in hospital a few months ago and a visitor brought me nuts and a nutcracker.
> Soon after I found myself surrounded by 5 nurses and a young doctor who
> neither of them had ever seen anyone crack a nut and eat the inside. It
> freaked two of the nurses really out.
> I am afraid this tendency has been going for 2-3 generations and that it has
> become seriously entrenched.
> john

And it goes way beyond such bewilderment/queasiness about unfamiliar 
*real* foods. I visited a guy yesterday who is experimenting--with 
excellent results--with converting biosolids from a municipal water 
treatment plant using earthworms, producing castings, with pathogens and 
toxins neutralized. He's proposed to three different local 
municipalities that they consider a "vermistabilization" project for 
dealing with their biosolids in ways that would save them money and 
generate a more useful soil amendment and zero pollution--but has been 
unable to get any traction at all. Opposition arises out of a horror of 
human s**t and a preference that it be "out of sight, out of mind," 
which in turn is based on utter ignorance of natural processes e.g. how 
nature safely (and beneficially) disposes of excrement using decomposer 
organisms.

See http://vermistabilization.com/VERMISTABILIZATION.html for more on 
this guy's work.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us

My book THE SMALL-SCALE POULTRY FLOCK (Chelsea Green) is scheduled to ship 
from the printer September 14.
www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_smallscale_poultry_flock