Wow, I have had a very full and productive afternoon! 

Last night I saw an ad on Craig’s List by someone who had free composted horse manure available.  (Composted, for those who don’t know gardening terms, means that it’s broken down to be rich soil, no smell.)  I emailed him last night for details, and called him early in the afternoon to confirm when I’d be coming.  I was going to take just my ds10, and then said my dd8 could come, and then ds6 asked if he could also come, so I said, ‘sure’.  And then my almost 3 yos also wanted to come, and I almost successfully put my foot down, but then thought about how much he’d appreciate getting out of the house.  So I took him, too.:)

Compost is so valuable to the soil that I’ve often seen it referred to as black gold, and people pay a good price for it.  So being able to get as much as I wanted for free was a big boon!  I asked the guy who had the compost what would be the best way to bring it home, and he suggested bringing shovels and five gallon buckets.  I only have one shovel (not including the kiddie one), so ds10 suggested calling friends of ours to see if they had any shovels.  Since they didn’t answer when we phoned them, we swung by on our way there, and they had just gotten home.  They lent us several shovels, and we took their 9 and 10 year old boys with us to shovel compost – our exciting field trip for the day!

So off we went, and it was really a beautiful day and a nice outing.  The kids all worked hard – even my littlest one took a little pail and a garden trowel so he could fill his bucket.  He felt very accomplished.  They filled up the equivalent of 20 five gallon buckets with compost to take back home for our garden to be.  I think there’s something really invigorating and simultaneously relaxing about working hard outside on a beautiful day.

There were horses, cows, a billy goat, and a flock of chickens there, and the kids enjoyed being able to look around and see all the animals.  Initially my ds2 was so apprehensive about the chickens that he was actually shivering when he was walking towards the barn area, and so my ds10 walked with him to reassure him.  It didn’t take long before he was telling me how nice the chickens were – “the chickens are my best friends” was what he told me when we came home. 

On the way home, I stopped at the supermarket to get a bunch of cardboard boxes so that we’d be able to unload the compost right away.  Cardboard is the first recommended layer for lasagna gardening, which when placed on the ground kills the grass or weeds underneath and provides a dark and moist place for earthworms to make their homes.  Compost is the next layer.  The idea behind lasagna gardening is to layer different kinds of organic materials and let it break down over time to be a good growing soil, thereby minimizing the hands on effort involved in preparing the soil for a garden. 

I made two twenty foot rows with the cardboard, and the kids poured out all of the compost on top of the cardboard.  Then we raked a bunch of leaves on top of that, from the leaves we had piled along the sides of the fence during the fall for this purpose.  I was amazed at how much compost we needed – I thought we must surely have gotten enough to practically cover my entire yard!  Not anywhere close. 

It’s really fast to put together a lasagna bed once you have the materials, and it’s so nice to have gotten this done.  I’ve been thinking about doing it for quite a while, and have been procrastinating because I wanted to have a fence all around the yard before I started, since it makes the yard look kind of untidy where you heap the organic matter.  I still don’t have a fence, but when I saw the offer of free compost, I decided to get started anyway.  I told my dh all last summer how much I wanted a fence, but this year I think he realizes that I really mean it.  Maybe when I said that we’ll pay retail for the fence if I can’t find it used that helped him realize that it’s a priority for me! 

It’s supposed to rain tonight, and I’m delighted to have this done before then, as the rain will help break everything down.  I’m also glad to have it taken care of before I get busy next week with Pesach preparations.  Officially in this gardening zone, it will be another two months before we can put out warm weather plants in the garden, so now I don’t have to do much but let these newly prepared garden beds ‘cook’ between now and then.  

I realized recently that my garden last year wasn’t the failure that I thought it was – it was more a matter of having an unrealistic idea of how much we could produce in the small amount of yard we dedicated to our garden, and I realized that if we wanted anything more significant, we’d need to use more of the yard.  I’d like to use my side yard for a garden this year, too, and I’m thinking that I might need to make another trip or two back for more compost!  But it’s a big chunk of time – including the driving in each direction, loading/unloading/spreading the compost, it took about five hours.  Which is basically an entire afternoon.  So I’ll have to see where preparing more lasagna beds falls on my list of priorities in the coming week or two, and if this is all that I get around to doing, it will still more than double the gardening area we’ll have available compared to last year. 

Avivah