I spent three days rototilling Sky's garden. My right knee is bad. But as long as I am not bending it much, it doesn't hurt too much. So walking behind the rototilleris within my abilities. I like when I'm useful like that.
Sky and her two nephews were putting compost ahead of my rototilling. The boys just loved seeing dead plants getting trashed into the soil.
When I was sixteen, I was working with the farm crew. We were horsing around on a cultivator, walking on its beams. I fell off hard. I spent three weeks in the hospital and was in physiotherapy for a year. But the knee got better. I just can't bend it fully without a little pain. I went back to the farm crew, learning more about tractors, but did no more horsing around.
When I'm on shift at The Store, I sometimes ask customers to fill the lower shelves for me. Accidents affect our future, make us both weaker and stronger.
Composting is a circle. We are returning plant matter to the earth where it came from. But it is not a full circle. Every season, nutrients leave our garden never to come back to the soil. So Sky likes to bring a few truckloads of pig manure to her garden. The pig manure is a combination of feces, urine, and sawdust, coming from The Hog Barn. The sawdust comes from Lumber Camp, which is a forested area of our Nation. The sawdust is actually waste from cutting lumber, but it makes great bedding for pigs. So the nutrients of the forest end up in the pig barn, which then ends in our garden, which then ends up in vegetables for people in Tankosin and Riverbend. The circle is not complete: we are not replacing nutrients into the forest.
Sky and I made a presentation to the Tribal Council for composters. For families willing to help this program, they could put their household food waste in a composter, which will eventually find its way into gardens. In this way, nutrients are coming from outside the Nation and into our gardens. But the Tribal Council seems to have other things on its mind.
When our corn cobs are harvested, we also takes the corn stalks back to the pig barn. We give something back to the pigs for letting us take their compost. Another circle.
The pigs just love chewing and playing with these tall plants. Happy pigs make better meat. Three small butcher shops in Riverbend and Joosemin pay us well for our hogs.
