Written by: Dr. Frannie Koe, MD
Edited by: Breanne Brazeale
When it comes to gardening, I am addicted to composting and mulching; I love mulch! I also have a fondness for all-natural materials and the understated beauty they have. To me, there is something so beautiful about a field full of hay bales that have not yet been picked up. I l love dried leaves, pine needles, wood chips, and grass clippings and I adore seeing rich brown dirt, teeming with life and new possibilities.
I even get excited to shovel horse, cow, rabbit and chicken manure and because I know how beneficial these well composted soil additives are for the health of my land, I can’t stop thinking about how to get more, more, more! Anytime I am driving down the road, I get so excited to see any form of compost, hay, manure, mulch or woodchips in anyone’s yard or farm! When fall rolls around, I enjoy seeing leaves on the side of the road and I often wonder how I can get them for myself! It upsets me when my chickens get in my rabbit yard and pick through all the manure and healthy soil under theirs cages!
Am I a freak? Yes, probably! But it is important to me to use the surrounding resources in a way that does not deplete the soil or environment, but supports and enriches it. We have a wood chipper, so all the brush and trees we have to clear get turned into mulch for the garden, and we even have composting toilets. Not only do mulch, manure, and compost all make rich brown nutrients for my garden, they also support soil health in the woods, the farms and the fields all over. Refuse is the most important resource we have on this earth to keep us all going! As a physician and a farmer, I am fascinated by the natural process of decomposition and how things we might consider waste return to the earth in order to nourish it and grow new life. Dead and done tissue is where it is at!
