Bless this Poo

While sitting on a humanure toilet bucket, I got to thinking about how common it is for us to give thanks, bless, and celebrate the food that we are about to eat, but wondered why don’t we bless it when it has finished giving our body sustenance?

Taking a Minute

In a culture of high stress, we are blessed to have bodies that need to eliminate wastes to have a few moments to ourselves before we hurry back to whatever maybe less important thing that we were doing.

Our “modern” homogenized tele-envisioned lifestyle is cleverly crafted from advertisements to make us buy stuff to puff up our status at the same time that it cuts us down. It normalizes a lifestyle that slaps cheap prices on pricelessness extracted from nature. We work like crazy to keep pace with that idealized lifestyle. And maybe we have become comfortable with the life that we know. And deep down, we know that we are complicit.

Luckily we are human, with the ability to learn, change, and grow.

https://weblife.org/humanure/default.html — Everything you need to know to process your own poop.

Blessing our poo, and where it goes when we’re done with it, might lead us to be more thoughtful about what we put into our own personal digesters. We might eat more healthily, when remember that it will end up in the soil and water to feed nature. More of us might use systems that makes good use of the nutrients you are cycling.

So, the next time you find yourself on the pot, waiting, pushing, or hurrying, take a moment to listen to yourself. Think about what you have been eating and how you are feeling. Give thanks to your body for its ability to process what you have taken in. And release it with gratitude. Take a look at it and study it’s condition. It’s a reflection of your health. Keep working on your healthy microbiome.

Give Thanks for your Poo

I give thanks to the blessings of nourishment given to my body. I am grateful to the planet that I’ve had plenty to eat and drink to satisfy my needs. And now, I release back into the cycle of life, that from which I’ve taken what I need to continue living and breathing. May what I release be of good use, that future generations can benefit from the nourishment passed through me. Blessings, Amen, ah Ho, Namaste, thank you, gracias.

Bless this poo, that I now do, Love from the dirt, Now cycling through

December 11, 2018December 28, 2018

Humanure in Action

Humanure

A step-by-step demonstration of how we safely process (un-waste) toilets at Patos Suertudos.

We are at a point where human survival on this planet demands that we change behaviors. On every level. Consciousness, culture, economics, technology, justice, health, basic needs; we need to re-vision and re-tool for a future we can live into.

For us to welcome in a new world, we need to be willing and able to see things differently and open our minds to different possibilities. Evolution and survival belongs to those who have the ability to adapt.

Humanure is one example of change of thinking that leads to a sustainable future. It invites us to rethink our ways of looking at our bodies and soil and to rekindle that connection.

This technology borrows from nature’s wisdom. There are as many ways to do this as there are people on the planet. This is just one example.

Here’s to pushing the envelope, because that’s where we need to be.

Much love and pura vida

Humanure Handbook – Free Download

What are Effective Microorganisms?

April 29, 2018May 2, 2018

Regenerating Tropical Dirt Life in Costa Rica

Shifting From an Extractive to a Generative Relationship with the Dirt

Swales capture rainwater and nutrients to build tropical soil and prevent erosion.

The industrial agriculture system is causing serious health problems throughout the world. Populations that have lived in close harmony with the soil and plants for eons, are being driven into debt by our extractive economic system.

Millions leave the land that has sustained them and their culture for eons. They flock to cities looking for scarce jobs that pay money. They find deep poverty in an economy void of truth or connection to our source. Left behind is their true wealth, a soil that sustained their families for generations.

Typically, those lands are left to be sucked into industrial agriculture, mining, or logging. Those lands are raped of their value and left as “overburden” or planted with meager “restoration” that will never in our lifetime see abundance.

We moved to tropical southern highlands of Costa Rica to connect to dirt and to learn from nature. We are lucky to have been able to relocate and to afford to take a degraded cow pasture and rundown buildings to build our own paradise.

Facing the Facts

The family that lived here before us ran a dairy operation until the owner got sick with Parkinson’s type symptoms and could no longer keep up the place. Clues to his sickness became more clear when we found containers of 2-4-D, a roundup-type glyphosate herbicide in the storage. Farmers spray these herbicides on the pastures to kill undesirable plants, so that they can plant grasses more suitable to cattle production. If you read the fine print, or care to dig up cautions about these herbicides, you find that Parkinson’s symptoms is one side effect caused by exposure to glyphosate.

Cattle production makes no natural sense in a land of steep slopes that used to be tropical rainforest. After the rainforest, came coffee, then cattle. When we arrived, the soil was void of nutrients. Dead. There were no worms in the compacted and chemically treated soil. In the tropics, plants hold the majority of nutrients. But in this ever more degrading of nutrients without replenishing the life of the soil creates poor soils that depend more upon chemicals to grow food. These chemicals don’t work so well in the human gut.

We figured out that if we were going to be able to live here, that the soil needed building, even more than the crumbling buildings. Once we had a reliable source of water and a place to compost our waste, we could move in, but we couldn’t wait on the soil. Given the evidence of impacts of the toxins on our health, we really didn’t want to live in a toxic environment. We had only an inkling of how much work it would be.

Designing Healthy Soil with Permaculture Principles

With Permaculture principles, we learned to observe, and listen deeply to what nature teaches about how to care for the life in the dirt that is feeding us. We began composting and hu-man-ur-ing. With knowledge garnered from nature, books, websites, and others, we are co-designing a garden to sustain us.

True wealth — Billions of life-giving micro-organisms

The awareness that in just one teaspoon-full of rich soil, are billions of microbes; living things that feed plants and us. We have learned to value this essential force of nature, and begin to work with that to grow food. We are discovering that through this dedication, we are creating true abundance.

No matter where we are, we can stop and look find our nature. We can find and make soil. Generate new soil. Even if you live in a place void of soil, make a worm bin that lives inside and feed them your food scraps.

If your garden is just a pot, the plants will respond to your care and nurturing when you develop soil of healthy living nutrients.

We are dirt, and to dirt we return. Your hands back into that dirt nurturing plants is their proper place. Where you can ground your soul in connection to planet life.

One with the soil, nature and life.

Can I have an AMEN-dment?!

Home

Lettuce feed you whirled peas and hominy.