Written by: Dr. Frannie Koe, MD
Edited by: Breanne Brazeale
As a gardener and farmer, I am addicted to composting and mulching; I love mulch so much! 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 waiting for the farmer to pick them 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 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 their cages!
Am I obsessed with soil, mulch, and compostable materials? Yes, probably! But it is important to me I use the surrounding resources in a way that does not deplete the soil or environment but supports and enriches them. We have a woodchipper, so all the brush and trees we must clear from our property get turned into mulch for the garden, and we even have composting toilets. Not only do mulch, manure, and compost all make nutrient-rich additions to 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. There is so much potential in decaying materials!
