Learning from stones to hear

Although people describe someone as “stone deaf”, stones taught me about deep listening. With zero experience, I decided to build a staircase of stones in a yard rich in stones deposited from a melt at the end of the last ice age. With sand and mortar, trial and error, I discovered that if I asked from my heart which stone wanted to be next, one would stand out, and inevitably fit perfectly into the space that I was filling. I believe that rough stone staircase gave that home character that became a key selling point of that house. It wasn’t up to code, but it felt good.

Sensitive instruments monitoring plant activity have proven that plants communicate. (See the Secret Life of Plants)

Given that plants have been evolving eons longer than humans, we shouldn’t be surprised. We can learn from plants how to evolve and thrive. When you ask a plant from your heart what it needs, know that it knows your thoughts and is hoping that you will get beyond wondering if you are crazy, to hear the answer.

Like plants, our own connected, truthful nature-self is waiting to be heard. When we touch a leaf, put our feet in the sand, wade in the ocean, watch the sunset, and walk in wilderness. We are one with all of it. We are the power of all that is, in the form of a human.

Our mobility gives us options

We have choices. Some more than others, but each of us can decide to bring about better health and prosperity. In big ways and small, local and global; wherever we have influence, we can act. It will take time, but where will we be in the time it takes if we don’t? So, take care to keep your energy charged so you can get back to this important work, renewed and amplified.

So, back to the dirt. For, it all begins and the ends in the dirt. Zillions of living microorganisms feeding the soil nourish us. Our health is completely dependent upon how we treat soil. Empires rise and fall based upon how people treat the soil. (See the movie, Dirt, the movie)

Mixing our kitchen waste into life in the soil

I invite those living without a close relationship to soil, to join your friends in dirt. Start by making compost. Leave out the chemicals sold as fertilizer that just simulate life. True living soil; with the bugs, worms, nematodes, bacteria, fungi, and mycelium, feed us real living food. Even if you live far from soil, you can support life by turning your kitchen scraps and shredded paper into living healthy soil. Even someone living in an apartment 30 floors up, can keep a bin in the kitchen. You may need to dig around to somewhere for some worms. Feed your plants with some of that soil, and your plants will absolutely perk up.

Come along as we explore how we get down and dirty in the Holy Church of Dirt, transformed and grounded, aligned with all that is.

Can I have an amen-d-ment?!

Look closely at an earthworm in the sunlight. Do you see the rainbow?

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?!

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Lettuce feed you whirled peas and hominy.

Tag: worms

Deep Listening in the Circle of life