When we bought the farm our knowledge of soil was limited to the little bit of gardening I had done in our backyard. It was, to be fair, extremely fertile; the old soils were decayed Brunswick shale that had once been part of an ancient lake bed and the loamy fertile top dressing was made up of composted organic matter applied over a period of more than forty years. My grandparents always kept an old bucket under their sink into which they dutifully dumped their used coffee grounds, egg shells and potato peelings. When it was full they’d dump it into a compost heap in the back yard where it slowly decayed into a rich, black soil. They added wood ash from the fireplace, leaves raked from the yard, the husks of corn, cardboard — whatever didn’t go into the garbage returned in time to the garden. We never planted a great deal more than tomatoes and cucumbers, peas and corn, but what we did grow always did well without the application of fertilizers and it fed my family for five generations.

I suppose I thought that I knew something then, about being able to grow vegetables and simply scaling up to become more or less self sufficient if we planted a larger garden. Of course I failed to take into account a wide range of factors, not the least of which was that I really knew nothing at all about soil itself. I had never given it much thought beyond the cursory overview most people have, that it holds the roots in place and allows the water to be absorbed by them. You had to amend it, of course, with the generous application of organic matter on an annual basis, but that was pretty much it. Soil, dirt, loam — these were in my mind interchangeable descriptors of the stuff beneath our feet.

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