Scavenging biomass
Many
of you answered my poll
to say that you wished I'd put all of my writing here rather than
hiding some away in ebooks. While I'm not going to reprint the
entirety of the October
issue of Weekend Homesteader on the blog, this
week's lunchtime series will highlight one of the month's four
projects: Scavenging biomass.
A century ago, many products that we think of as "waste" were cherished
as sources of garden fertility. The invention of chemical
fertilizers, though, made most farmers turn to easier to handle (and
less smelly) sources of nutrients. Although this sea change has
damaged our environment and degraded the nutritional quality of our
food supply, there is a silver lining --- the backyard homesteader has
dozens of choices of free biomass to choose from.
The type of biomass you hunt down for this week's project will depend
on where you spend your time. Many of you live out in the country
but commute into a city every day to work --- you can scavenge in both
places without going out of your way. If you spend most of your
time in one setting or the other, though, it's probably not worthwhile
to drive too far outside your usual stomping grounds for free biomass.
I've separated sources of biomass into those found in your household,
in rural areas, and urban areas to help you simplify your scrounging.
Gathering free sources of biomass can be a bit time consuming and
physically strenuous, but the rewards are many. Since you'll
usually want to ask for permission before grabbing biomass out of
someone's dumpster, your scavenging will help you meet new people and
form connections in your community. In many cases, you'll be
keeping "waste" from ending up the landfill while building the long
term fertility of your soil. Last of all, it's just plain fun to
get something so useful for free.
 This post is part of our Scavening Biomass lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I am glad you wrote that. It is precisely what you were going to pay me to write.
(I am Anna's sister, in case you are puzzled. And I write rare features hither and yon.)