ASTERN --14-3-- AHEAD

Food and its preparation are dealt with under another closely associated chapter

​The intake of food falls under cooking and serving in the Galley Slavery chapters.  

This section deals with the subsequent consequences of the previous activities.

Excrements are substances left over [from metabolic processes] which cannot be used or are no longer useful to a living organism and need to be removed from the system and returned to the earth. 

​Nature is an ingenious and prodigious re-cycler and uses plants to transform useful chemicals such as nitrogenous compounds, sulphates, phosphates, etc. into substances useful to the plant and subsequently to any creature which consumes them. 

In pure nature, Gaia uses a whole array of wonderful organisms (bacteria, insects, worms, fungi)  in a recycling process which transforms shite back into earth completing the inevitable Cycle of Life.  Even while we live, we are in constant decay and renewal.

Food in one end, processed internally, excreted from the other end.  In the history of the world, it is only very recently that man decided not to emulate all other animals and began to go in a bucket . 

The fact that he shat n pist in the same po meant there was a right ding dong between solids and liquids due to differing chemical properties of the two. 

(Refer back to previous page 14-2) 
​
As of even date, the state-of-the-art in excremental disposal uses the 14.2 concept.  There are other versions of 14.2 known as pump-outs (14-1) and there are cassettes for boats.

In 2012, I decided to use a composting system learned as a child, growing up in a house where there was no running water. 

​We has an "Elsan" bucket into which seven of us would void til it was more or less full. 

​I, being oldest, biggest and strongest would lift the bucket out of its container and dispose of the contents into a hole in the garden which became over time our compost heap. 

​The male members of the family, being suitably endowed, were exhorted to pee outside rather than in the Elsan.  We had a large and private garden so this was not a social problem. 

We knew, because we were told, that not only would this minimise the smell of piss in the 'lavatory' but that the less there was in the bucket the easier it would compost. 

Our parents came from generations of forebears who had done things that way. 
Alas, I'm the last generation to carry that knowledge; the house was eventually supplied with piped water in 1977. 

The 'compost heap' began as a hole in 1947 with the extracted soil stored to one side.  Once the first Elsan bucket went in it was sprinkled with soil; the bucket was rinsed out with rain water.  Its next trip would be maybe six weeks later.   

At some stage, adjacent to the first hole, a second pit would have been prepared. 

We gardened, so grass cuttings, weeds, vegetable peelings, hedge clippings and anything that was going was added to the developing heap and all the time shovels of the adjacent soil was added. 

RHUBARB IN ABUNDANCE

​By 1949 we had a raised bed in which we planted rhubarb. We lived in that house from 1947 to 1977 or so.  And we had the best rhubarb in the parish.  There was a constant cycle going on then with 'fresh' compost at one end and the rhubarb following it down the garden. 

The soil from the original dig was used as a base in our new glasshouse in 1958. 

Rhubarb as a plant has an odd way of growing.  Its 'stool' gets bigger and bigger over maybe the years, giving more and more sticks.  But eventually it is noted that the supply of sticks diminishes as does the girth of a stick. 

That Autumn you chop off a large 'clump' before the frost.  It is left out in the open til Spring and planted it in a new site and take no rhubarb from it for two years. 

  Over time you have a cycle going on and repeated about every two years.  You continue to supply the parish with rhubarb and later with stools of their own.

Now! ... If you have been following closely,  you will have totally forgotten the primary purpose of the compost heap: to recycle shite and garden debris and convert it into rhubarb and apples which just a slight stretch of imagination will allow you to see winter and spring months of rhubarb tarts, apple pies, jams, chutneys and  sauces.  

In Spring grass would go in.  In Summer lawn and hedge clippings and vegetable waste from the kitchen.  In autumn there were leaves. We had a fine orchard.  But right alongside the compost heap was a magnificen Brambley seedling which supplied apples as big as turnips in abundance

In Winter the clean-up before the frost and all year the vegetable 'waste'.

KEEP IT WARM
KEEP IT MOIST
OXYGENATE IT
TURN IT OVER

And so we move onto a boat bringing all this experience with us.  So what are we going to do with it? 
We have a proven record of turning human excrement into tomatoes from the glasshouse days.

We know that separating the liquid from the solid content speeds up the process.
We know that actual soil added is an essential factor as is garden debris.
And we have discovered over the years that the compost heap generated heat.

We have seen it happen with horse shite on adjacent farms and we have seen composting big scale in the same places. 
We have seen the beautifully aromatic loam that produced beautiful potatoes in our grandad's garden.

We have entered the 21c with "transferable skills" ... an AirHead Composter ... and a narrowboat to develop our off-grid skills

KEEP IT WARM
KEEP IT MOIST
OXYGENATE IT
TURN IT OVER

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WIP 2024-02-01 Lá le Bríd
​(Earrach in the Gaelic tradition)
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​​​©MMXXIV
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Survival at All Costs
Or at No Cost At All