The industrial food system is broken. Many farmers have bought into the idea that the only way to feed the world is to use genetically modified organisms, chemicals, fertilizer and other industrial food production systems. They are often told by sales reps that it is better to feed the world and have people sick than to not use their products and have people die! Yes, my neighbours have heard this crap from sales reps and it is a lie!
The industrial food system does not follow the natural cycles of nature. By harvesting food from the fields, all those nutrients are then processed so that most people cannot absorb them, shipped to the city, consumed and then flushed down the toilet with potable water. In some jurisdictions, those nutrients are flushed directly into the river and out to sea. In others, the nutrients are collected processed and shipped to farmer fields. The problem is that the human waste is so toxic from disease and chemicals (pharmaceutical drugs, etc) that they have to treat it. The process kills everything of value and makes it all inert ... it is dead.
So how can we feed the world without all the industrial methods? We fix the nutrient cycle and use it as Mother Nature intended as the industrial system broke the cycle and is now scrambling to find solutions to a problem that is very simple.
What we have done is recognized that we need help to heal the earth. When ever we get huge numbers of animals in a very small space, it becomes toxic. Whether that be people, cows, pigs, chickens, etc. Mother Nature cannot properly deal with the waste and as such has a mechanism to deal with it; disease. That thins out the herd and makes it more harmonious with the environment. So we moved away from the city to an area that we could be harmonious with.
Animal manure on the left, humanure on the right. We put the chicken and goat manure together.
We found that we cannot do it ourselves and as such, we reached out to the plants and animals to give us a hand. They have answered the call and have performed brilliantly. What we found is that we had to follow a specific protocol to make sure we can control disease and parasites. The above graphic shows that our humanure gets composted and turned into compost to feed the plants that we then use to feed the animals. The animals manure also gets composted and is used to feed the plants that we eat. This cycle ensure that there are multiple organisms for the nutrients to go through and breaks up the disease and parasite cycles at the same time.
Close up of the goat manure before composting. You can see the hay and goat pellets mixed together.
We don't bother turning our compost like a lot of people do. We just let it sit for a couple years. We don't have the time or energy to be turning it over due to the volume of manure that we are dealing with. When we move the chicken and goat manure to the compost pile, it turns the pile enough to start the bacteria up. We melt snow on -30C days with the compost heap. A good cook helps break it down, but time will also help us out as well.
Nicely composted after about two years. Ready for the garden! This is how we build soil!
By the time we get to the pile for the garden, we have amazing smelling compost and it has transformed our garden. When we spread the composted humanure on the pasture, it creates a lush, green mat of grass for the goats and chickens to eat. It also contributes to building soil too.
To ensure that the nutrients are not contaminated by any drugs, etc, we built an outhouse. If anybody visits that is taking any man made chemicals, we ask that they go to the outhouse so that we can sequester their toxic waste in the outhouse pit and not have it within our nutrient cycle.
As a result, we don't need fertilizers, chemicals or any other industrial crap in order to grow food. We don't deal with toxicity either because we are living within the means of our natural environment to be able to process our waste. In the end, we can reuse the nutrients over and over again, sharing them with our animals. We end up being very healthy as a result and we hardly ever get sick. Even colds are rare and when we catch one, they only last for a few hours.
It has been an amazing experience learning how to get back into the natural cycle and it is paying off very well.
Our heritage pasture raised chickens eating plants and bugs grown with composted humanure!
