News

**Walking Corn**

Quote of the Week (Organic Consumers):

Quote:"…the living world is complex, and beholding it should leave us all aching with awe. So start with topsoil, the beginning place. Remember, one million creatures per tablespoon. It's alive, and it will protect itself if we stop assaulting it. It protects itself with perennial polycultures, with lots and lots of plants intertwining their roots, adding carbonaceous leaves, and working together with mycelium, bacteria, protozoa, making a new organism between them, the mycorrhiza that talks and nourishes and directs.

"Defend the soil with your life, reader: there is no other organism that can touch the intelligence of what goes on beneath your feet.

"So here are the questions you should ask, a new form of grace to say over your food. Does this food build or destroy topsoil? Does it use only ambient sun and rainfall, or does it require fossil soil, fossil fuel, fossil water, and drained wetlands, damaged rivers? Could you walk to where it grows, or does it come to you on a path slick with petroleum?"

- The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability by Lierre Keith

Something to ponder.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob241.htm

**Sara-Ka-El**

if you remove the top layer of soil which includes the roots of wild grasses all tied together then the layer under neath is exposed to rainfall erosion which form rivulets and then gulleys and then the sediment washes into the streams and kills the fish.

this happens in construction and agriculture and forestry practices.

so to replace the A layer you can used a compost blanket, seeds and duff.

the compost blanket is great because it absorbs rainfall impact and holds alot of moisture. it does not slide down a hill in a gooey mass like alot of people think. throw some microraiza powder in with the seeds and the roots gtrow real fast and deep.

I first read that as "Defend the Soul With Your Life" ... which I agree with completely. However, defending good soil is important, too. :hf:

**Walking Corn**

Thank you.

Not that many are interested in the soil beneath their feet, but if so; Tompkins & Bird's Secret Life of Plants & Secrets of the Soil will open your eyes to an incredible, incredible world.

Another magical vegetable-hole is presented by Cleve Backster: Primary Perception.

As I once read in a book of poetic translations of "primitive folk:"

ALL lives, ALL dances, ALL is loud.

**singing spider** Not Here Long User ID: 9674 09-10-2010 01:59 AM

The German word for topsoil is "Mutterboden".
Literal translation would be "motherground".
I like that word.

**Timetorun** Proud Sockpuppet User ID: 9444 09-10-2010 02:13 AM

The Native Americans have always called the earth, OUR mother.

**Sarah**

**Sarah**