The Choice to Go Organic

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself" Franklin D. Roosevelt 1937 

It all began with a birthday present from Peter, loss of my full time job and a phone call from Micky from Agriculture NZ encouraging me to take a place on the year long Go Organic Horticulture course.  Sometimes books can be a springboard for a change in your life.  My gift was a book, "Cows Save the Planet and Other Improbable Ways to Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth" by Judith D. Schwartz.

Living in central Auckland the only cow I am likely to see is a Warhol art print. I can't see me looking after grazing cattle in the future but this book really rings true for me.  Modern farming has replaced mixed or indigenous farming practices in the pursuit of increased production. It is frightening to read about the areas of land fast becoming deserts, but it's encouraging to see solutions offered by scientists turned practitioners who have reversed damage as well as reduce loss of carbon into the atmosphere.

I had been tossing up whether to study nutrition or horticulture to further inform my food blog Jeannies Kitchen.  This book made up my mind.

Where I live people have sculptured gardens.  They look great; neat, green and visually pleasing. This is a monocultural scene with just one plant type.  In an urban garden it's fine but travelling through our farming country how often do we see verdant smooth looking paddocks with few trees or hedgerows. Our eyes enjoy this smooth green carpet but is it serving our soil well?

I have increasingly become aware that  even if you eat the right things, you may not be getting all the nutrients required to keep you healthy.  Why is this happening?  This book for me has the answer - its all in the soil.

For me "growing your own" is not only a life skill but could give us a better and healthier life.

 I decided to call my blog Soil Beneath my Fingernails after reading this:

"When I was a kid, we called it "dirt".  It was brown (that unfortunate colour with scatological overtones) and got stuck under our fingernails when we played outside, making the immediate, requisite hand washing an ordeal. It was an affront to the smooth-surfaced chrome aesthetic that dominated the era.  There was the impression that if we failed to scrub it off, something bad would happen (if nothing else our clothes might be "soiled"). Still, we played in it, with toy versions of the construction vehicles that were ripping up the earth just yards from our house.  For this was the mid 1960's and people were planting houses the way a thousand miles west in the Grain Belt they planted corn, acres and acres of houses sprouting up with their tidy brick chimneys, and matte aluminium siding, consuming the land in architectural and social monocultures.  We neighbourhood kids were creatures of our time: In our pretend games we were builders, not farmers."  

 from "Cows Save the Planet... by Judith D Schwartz.

The blog is my journal to track my journey through a year of learning about organic horticulture and  keeping a record of the things I am learning.

You are welcome to follow and I will leave you with this thought...

"How do you build carbon in the soil? By reversing the processes that released carbon into the air. Oil, coal and gas represent one source of emissions but over time the greater culprit has been agriculture. Since about 1850, twice as much atmospheric carbon dioxide has derived from farming practices as from burning of fossil fuels (the roles crossed around 1970).  In the past 150 years, between 50 and 80 percent of organic carbon in the topsoil has gone airborne. The antidote to this rapid oxidation is regenerative agriculture: working the land with the goal of building topsoil, encouraging the growth of deep-rooted plants, and increasing biodiversity. This turns the conventional approach to farming upside down. Rather than focusing on growing crops, the intention is to grow the soil."

from "Cows Save the Planet... by Judith D Schwartz.