Soil Work Yet To Be Done

When we first settled on this land we came to call “Taproot Garden,” we knew nothing about soil.  We had read some things; heard some lectures; come to understand something of the architecture of it.  But we hadn’t explored it, dug around in any of it; we hadn’t scooped up a handful and examined the character of it beneath our eyes and between our fingers.  Moreover, we were deluded.  We live in Iowa, the apex of fertility.  This is the land where things grow.  We had no idea that this was only occasionally true.  

 

I don’t mean “occasionally” to suggest the vicissitudes of time, although that, too, can be true.  Given the almost fiendish undulations of flooding and drought, of the mischievous late freeze (or early) and the intervening storm, sometimes things grow and sometimes they don’t.

 

No, by “occasionally” I was thinking geographically rather than temporally.  Iowa does indeed have fertile soil; it just doesn’t have it everywhere.  Take Taproot Garden as Exhibit A.  The U.S. Geological Soil Survey classifies our property as “highly erodible.”  The very feature that keeps this land above the flood plain puts our topsoil at risk.  We enjoy a higher elevation, with a domed landscape.  Rain washes the soil downhill.  Shortly after moving here we acquired soil maps from the County Extension office that indicated wild and multiple fluctuations in types and character.  There is some good soil here; it’s just located here and there, interrupted by wide bands of less promising…dirt.  Having moved here with the intention of producing a garden, I arrived fueled with the naïve assumption that the matter was as simple as sowing a few rows of seeds.  The land itself quickly disabused me of this ignorance.

 

We learned that there would be work to do, not simply using the soil but building it, first.  There would be compost to add, microbial activity to encourage, organic content to develop, fertility to build and restore.  And it would not happen overnight.  

 

We just completed our 9^th garden season here – a season cut short by early frosts and snow.  We didn’t really mind, because it has been a busy season – harvesting and preserving - and we were happy to slow the pace.  We will eat well throughout the winter and subsequent spring.  The in-gathering has been abundant.  Which is to say that these years spent encouraging the soil are bearing fruit.  Literally.  Of course, there is more to do.  Soil, after all, is a living thing that, like the rest of us, needs care and feeding and loving attention.  It is a partnership.  A reciprocity.  If we want good things to emerge from this garden we have to invest good things in exchange.  

 

Constantly.

Intentionally.

Intelligently.

Faithfully.

 

I ponder these things on this election eve, acknowledging that the same is true of democracy, community, culture.  Regardless of who prevails at the ballot box, there will be work to do.  There are fertile corners and bands in this American soil in which good things grow.  But there is heavy clay, as well, in which good seeds struggle to find purchase.  Erosion has taken a heavy toll on our life together, fecundity washed away by turbulent acrimony and the misguided presumption of permanence.  

And then, of course, there is the poison.  God, there has been so much poison spilled!   We have deluded ourselves into thinking it actually aided or protected or cleared the way for better things, but the evidence is increasingly clear.  Poison does what it always does:  it kills.  We have been denuded, defoliated, deadened.

 

Now remains what always remains:  the slow, determined rehabilitation of the soil.  The soil which is "us."

 

Whoever wins.

Whichever “side” prevails.

 

Compost.  Spades.  Determined will.  The sweat equity beneath anything of promise.  We have work to do.  

 

If we want anything nourishing to grow.  

One thing is certainly true:  we have plenty of accumulated manure piled around to help us get started.