My Relationship with Soil

This is what I turned in for my first soils assignment. :) Sorry, the mother's womb / earth metaphor may be a little strange, but creative maybe??

Joshua Johnson

Dr. Cathy Perillo

Soils 201—Soil: A Living System

3 September 2014

My Relationship with Soil

            Soil and I go way back. In fact, I think I came from soil straight from my mother’s womb.  I probably am part soil. Well, we all come from soil, do we not? I played in it a lot, and I loved getting dirty. I still do loving getting dirty. I didn’t know I was still capable of playing in soil, but I found myself “planting” some canned worms into one of our garden beds and began to pour water in the hole and make mud. Then I got it all over my hands. And it was great.

            I love digging holes in soil. I used to dig holes to (a) reach China and (b) find dinosaur bones. I never made it to China, but I did find some chicken bones. It is fun to dig a deep hole with a big, ol’ shovel. To see the different colors of soil coming out as you dig farther down (what I know now as horizons). And it is always fun to get to the dark soil below the surface – that’s a happy moment right there. It’s like finding gold. Gardener’s gold. I used to just dig holes, leave them open for a while, and then fill them in sometime later.

            I have also done lots of gardening, so I love soil. I made raised beds at one of my old homes and had to pick up some topsoil from a place that sells dirt and then pour it into the beds. Then, I placed gardening mix/soil where I was planting the vegetables. Over here in Pullman, I made another vegetable garden in the middle of the lawn. I laid down some cardboard over the lawn, followed by compost from WSU, raw manure from a local farm, and some more cardboard and soil and then I let nature do her thing! Now, I have a rich, nice bed for growing vegetables and I didn’t even have to dig up the lawn!

            Whenever I weed, I try to shake off as much dirt from the roots as I can. Even though this action adds time to the process, I believe it is valuable to keep the soil where it’s from and also to not lose too much soil to the yard waste! It’s important to me to keep the soil intact.

            In the future, I plan to further my relationship with soil. I want to have a family farm someday, with livestock, orchard trees, vegetables, and pasture. Soil will therefore continue to remain valuable to me and close to my heart. I will learn more about the benefits of organic matter, how to increase soil tilth, and how to manage soil with livestock. I would like to implement a rotational grazing system for the animals, so as to keep them from eating the soil bare. In that way, whenever they eat the grass down in one area, I will move them to the next area so that the grass can regrow during their absence and the soil will remain covered and will protect against erosion and loss of fertility. I also want to have a really deep tilth horizon. (Don’t all plant-growers?) One of our neighbors has some really rich soil for their garden bed. The previous owners of their place had laid organic matter, compost, and manure each year – now it’s about four-foot-deep tilth! I want that sort of soil someday.

            And then one day, when my relationship with soil has reached its fullness, I will return to the womb of my mother and be laid in the earth. I will go to whence I came and come home. My body will decay in the bosom of the earth and maggots and worms and insects will eat my flesh. On that day, my body will provide fertility, sustenance, and life to the world through death. And I will be assured that my death will bring life to the soil wherever my body rests. And I will then be part of the soil and the soil part of me. And that is a secure thought indeed.