Oklahoma Dreaming: Walkabout, Part 1
by Donna Schoenkopf
As promised, I am going to take you on a walkabout on the land around my house. (We will go into the woods another time.)
But first I want to introduce you to Masanobu Fukuoka. His ideas came to fruition just around the time organic farming started, in the 1940’s. He died in 2008 at the age of 95.
He wrote a book called One Seed Revolution.
I first heard about him probably thirty years ago. He was a revolutionary guy in the agricultural world. All I could remember about him as I walked around my land was that he said you should just throw seed on the ground and let Nature take its course.
YES!!
Well, I looked him up for this story and found out he was the originator of “Natural Farming,” which meant that you didn’t weed, or use pesticides or fertilizer, nor did you till the earth. Just throw the seeds on the ground and they will germinate on the surface of the ground if conditions are right.
If you are growing a crop, sow the seeds among the plants before you reap.
Keep your ground covered. Leave cuttings where they drop. Cover naked ground with straw.
He’s my kind of guy.
With Masanobu’s philosophy in mind, let us begin.
We’ll start where we left off ... at our haphazard (and VERY Fukuoka) compost heap.
It is a thing of beauty.
It’s the prettiest thing on the north side of the house. I had been wondering what to put out there. Few plants grew in that forlorn patch of ground. The sun beats on it, the soil is dense, dense clay. My kitchen window looks out onto this barren stretch. I started throwing my vegetable kitchen scraps on it, and, voila! A garden! With no planting, weeding, feeding, pesticides ... just a magic garden, blooming out my window.
How about that for natural farming?
So let’s meander eastward.
Propped against my northern wall are two large trash cans. One holds the cuttings off my house plants. These are about five feet long and came off of some plants I’ve had indoors. I cut them off because I had a project at Sequoyah School with four classes of first and second graders and needed some cuttings.
They sit in the trash can tub because I don’t have anywhere else to put them. They’ve started to get some of their leaves burned from being outside in broad daylight, but mostly they love it there. They love it so much that I have to put at least a foot of water in the can twice a day so they won’t dry out.
Thirsty little buggers.
The other can is for trash. There’s hardly any. What a good recycler I am!
Oh, I forgot to tell you (the trash can reminded me) ... I also throw dog and cat hair on my compost heap. I get it out of my vacuum. It seems that dog and cat hair repels deer and rabbits and all other nibblers from your garden. You have no idea how good I felt when I found a use for all that dog and cat hair!
Masanobu would be proud of me.
We walk past the trash cans and see the overturned bucket next to my big shovel. The bucket is overturned because, every morning, moisture slides off the roof of my house filling whatever container happens to be under the downpour. This includes my Day-Glo clogs, the upside down lid of my trash can, the wheelbarrow, the bucket. Water collects there and, presto!, we have fat, juicy mosquitoes in no time at all!
I now turn over everything that can possibly collect water.
We walk past the “gravel pit,” put there by my hero, Peewee. It was free. Again. I tried to pay him but he said he always dropped off free gravel to his friends when he had extra.
He IS going to heaven. There better be one, just for HIM.
I have put that gravel around my house to de-muddify the area. I have used it around my shed, same reason. I have made a walkway through my front “yard” with it. I have used it to make the turnaround in my driveway more usable during rainy weather. I have used it to patch holes in my driveway. I have used it to anchor an apple tree that was bending too far over when the high winds blew.
And I have used those rocks in creating really cool plant cuttings in cans and other recycled containers. I am thinking of putting up a stand out on Highway 177, to sell them. I envision signs a mile down the road on both sides of the highway saying Curios. It will be my summer job. The only problems I see are HEAT and chiggers and ticks.
And because of these problems, I am thinking of making my little roadside stand into an honor system.
Hey! Don’t scoff. A nice old geezer in Malibu has an honor system for his fruits and vegetables on Pacific Coast Highway. And a banana farm outside of Carpenteria also had an honor system.
And if they steal the money, they probably need it.
For meth.
Hey. Always there to help.
But let’s keep moving, folks.
There’s my shed. Built by Peewee out of the same stuff as my house. They match.
My shed is in need of organizing, so let’s not linger. (I’m avoiding dealing with it right now.)
Around the northeast corner of the house we go.
And there is my outdoor shower.
I love my outdoor shower.
The buffalo grass is at least four feet high there, thanks to the water of my daily shower. It’s the first thing you see. It is so gorgeous, it takes my breath away. The ground there used to be completely barren. Just red clay dirt, and when it rained, red clay mud. NOW it is green and lush and wild. My shower water carved a sweet little rill down the hill and from that grows my rhododendron (almost completely hidden by the buffalo grass), and my elephant ears that I bought this spring. They have come up, three clumps of them, through the tall grass. They also love it there. Some lavender bushes and some lilies have pushed through the earth further down the hill.
There are some moss-covered pieces of wood on the ground near the shower so the person taking a shower will have softness to step on. I got them from Rebecca’s Violet Meadow. (This is where she picked out her building site for HER little housie in the forest.)
Grass grows up through the holes in my rubber shower mat on the ground. My beautiful metal shelving, very high-tech looking, under the shower, is from Eric, my handsome, brilliant, and generous first-born. I have a flat rock on it that holds my soap. My shampoo and scrub brush for my cracked and red-dyed feet (from the red mud) lie there. Two hooks on the wall for towel and clothes.
A table and four chairs sit a little way away, almost completely engulfed by the grass. It is beautiful.
There are round stepping stones from my outdoor shower to the eastern sliding glass door. They are set in gravel and beautiful bright green grass encircles each one. You couldn’t have planted or planned it more perfectly.
Masanobu was right.
Next week: Walkabout, Part 2.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
betsy!! you are so smart!!
gracias, mi amiga.
donna
2009-06-02 by Donna SchoenkopfOh how I used to love Oklahoma lilacs! Have your bushes bloomed? What a wonderful home you have made for yourself.
2009-06-03 by JoAnne Sangerthe lilacs have buds! you must be psychic. and nature and peewee did most of the work. but thanks!
2009-06-05 by Donna Schoenkopf
We recently set up some rain barrels in our yard. Instructions accompanying them suggested putting a teaspoon of olive oil in the collected water….apparently mosquitoes won’t lay eggs in oily water, however sparse.
2009-06-02 by Betsy