2 Mar 2011
I went running this morning (shamefully, it was the first time that I woke myself up before work to do this) and then spent the entire morning by myself cleaning up months worth of bunny poop. For what it was worth, I finally understand bunnies in the larger picture.
To feed them, we cut down bush-like trees and cut off the green ends. The green ends are relatively very little; we throw the rest of this giant bush in a pile that grows rapidly day to day. Then the bunny droppings and chewed branches get thrown on another—also rapidly growing—pile. So much waste for a few bunnies, each of which will hardly make a substantial appetizer for a family of four, right? At least chickens give eggs along the way before you eat them! But this is why this farmer, Angelo, mandated that farmers stay for a minimum of three weeks: it is necessary to see the larger picture. If a WWOOFer sees just one part of it, s/he may walk away thinking to have understood a linear process, when in fact all processes on a farm like this are circular.
I realized that the first pile of bare branches goes to become fire wood, and the second goes to become rich, nitrogenous compost for the garden! We don’t cut down all of those giant bushes just for the bunnies; we would have to do it anyway to heat the house. In fact, we would probably have to cut off the wild green ends, anyway, as alive they won’t kindle a fire and dead they are a brittle nuisance. As for the second pile, for a healthy garden animal droppings are a top notch source of nutrition…the natural, circular process of nutrient recycling that modern chemicals are trying to replace (with the goal of turning a self-sustaining process into a capitalist one; not, as they will claim, to feed more people). So while I spend the better part of my day scooping up bunny poop and wheel barreling it to the garden, nothing was a waste like before it may have seemed; it all connected to the larger picture!
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