The Philosopher Farmer - Stuff

Welcome back to your first installment of the Philosopher Farmer. This is where we discuss my mind wanderings while doing tasks at the farm.

Disclaimer I am not a trained professional. Full Stop.

Today while I was raking and shoveling s&%*(what will henceforth be called Stuff) in the chicken coops, it got me thinking about Stuff. Sometimes you have too many chickens (my wife owns the birds) and mucking out the Barn will be hard and composting will take a very long time. Waiting too long makes the task more daunting and honestly, sometimes a bit frightening. The Stuff is so thick and noxious that it is scary to even look at, and you might want to ask for help. There is nothing wrong admitting that a task is too big to handle yourself. There is however, a problem when you let your Stuff build up so high that your Barn begins to fall down around you, this is when you know you need to deal with your Stuff. There is Stuff from the back end of a chicken as well as Stuff in our lives comes in and they come in three basic forms.

Fresh, like this lamb is fresh

First there is the fresh Stuff. Fresh Stuff is the gooey, wet mass that smells foul but is quite easy to clean since it hasn’t soaked in. Fresh Stuff pollutes everything around it with it’s miasma. Fresh Stuff, if cleaned regularly and with a modicum of effort, can be dealt with and discarded fairly easily, because it hasn’t had time to fester. If this Fresh Stuff is left without being dealt with it, it will harden and turn into the second category of Stuff - Stale Stuff.

Stale Stuff, very hard to get through

Stale Stuff is the Fresh Stuff that has time to develop a thick protective layer on top. The scent has dissipated and you might not even realize it is there and honestly it doesn’t get your shoes as dirty as Fresh Stuff. The problem is that under this hard covering is a rancid, caustic, heating filth that will seep into your cement or wood framing (or pretty much anything) and break it down if you leave it on. Your shovel thuds and scrapes against the top, barely breaking the surface; however, once you crack that shell it stinks worse then Fresh Stuff. Everything covered in it is weakened and rotting and plainly speaking-ugly. This Stale Stuff is more difficult to deal with because of the hard outer shell. However, if you have the gumption to break through, it will lead you to the final Stuff- Useful Stuff.

Now this Useful Stuff is by far the biggest challenge, because of all the steps it takes to make Stuff into Useful Stuff. You clean your Fresh Stuff, break through your Stale Stuff and gather all of it into a stinking, nasty, pile of potential Useful Stuff. Turning it faithfully for months (or letting your chickens scratch around it) the sun heating it, the gases moving through it, you sift it, exam it, watch it, and let it air out to release the stench. It takes time, but after all that, you find that all the Fresh Stuff and that Stale Stuff can turn into something incredibly beneficial. It’s now Useful Stuff, and that Stuff is the best foundation for growth. Flowers flow from it, vegetables climb out of it, fruits vine through it, it has become nutrition and sustenance, and life. After all the shoveling, and sifting and disgusting labor, you get to see things grow and know that this happened from dealing with all of that Stuff.