Inner City Farmer

Compost_D responded to my last post with a couple questions about the legality of “humanure,” that is, composting your own feces, within the city limits of Austin, and what follows is pretty much everything I know on the subject.

In Section 15-5-8 of its City Code, the City of Austin basically passes the buck on the subject when it states that it follows the “applicable state law penalty provisions related to on-site sewage facilities” as provided by the Texas Health and Safety Code. Article 5 of Section 341.011 of the state code forbids “sewage, human excreta, wastewater, garbage, or other organic wastes deposited, stored, discharged, or exposed in such a way as to be a potential instrument or medium in disease transmission to a person or between persons.” A little further down the page in Section 341.014, it says that “human excreta in a populous area shall be disposed of through properly managed sewers, treatment tanks, chemical toilets, or privies constructed and maintained in conformity with the department’s specifications, or by other methods approved by the department.”

That all seems a little vague to me, but I do know that, according to Austin’s Building Code, if you’re building a house that’s within 100 feet of a sewer line you must by law connect to it. But as far as I can tell there’s nothing that says you actually have to use it. What’s to stop an intrepid humanure enthusiast from composting his own “excreta” as long as he does so in a way that doesn’t endanger the health of his neighbors?

I’m just a simple farmer so all this legal mumbo jumbo is a little over my head. However, I do know that the same rules that are designed to protect the public health are also hurting the environment we live in, which in turn will be negatively impacting the public health in the every near future. It’s high time that we as a society get over our Victorian priggishness about shit. According to Joseph Jenkins, author of The Humanure Handbook, “nearly a third of all household drinking water in the U.S. is used to flush toilets.” Which in a time of drought such as we’re experiencing right now seems absolutely absurd and will only grow more absurd the closer we get to experiencing a global crisis a hundred times worse than Peak Oil, and that is Peak Water. Add to this the fact that we as a society are also rapidly depleting the fertility of our soil, and the fact that we flush away so much rich organic material, i.e. shit, becomes almost laughably ridiculous, except I’m not laughing. Are you?

I’ll say this for those in charge of the City of Austin: they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to selling the idea of conservation. A smart homeowner can get all sorts of things for free and/or save a ton of money by taking advantage of all the rebates that are offered. I bought a high efficiency washing machine just after moving into this place, and, if I remember correctly, I received not one but two rebate checks soon afterward, one from Austin Energy, the other from the City. I also drove down to some generic office building downtown and picked up a low-flow shower head, which was about ten times nicer than my old one. And a couple months ago I got a rebate for buying an Energy Star refrigerator. The list of what they offer rebates for goes on and on: solar panels, rainwater harvesting, air conditioning, weatherization.

Just when I thought I’d hit them up for everything possible I discovered that the City was giving away high-efficiency toilets. I would be just as happy to install a “dry” toilet in my house—that’s right, humanure!—but composting your own feces remains an illegal activity within the city limits. So today I drove up to Metric and Rutland and picked myself up a fancy new Niagara Ecologic toilet. Warning to those who might be thinking of doing the same: it appears the program is wildly popular. When I got there I was initially informed that they were all out of toilets, but one miraculously appeared after a little poking around. Be sure to give them a call first.

I had a tough choice to make this weekend: attend Dick Pierce’s Organic Gardening class or Tempe Sikora’s Earthen Plaster workshop. As much as my garden needs tending—actually, “resuscitation” is probably a better word—the timing of Tempe’s class was just too perfect. Having already gutted the inside of the future Man Cave, I’ve been eager to start working on its interior. The fact that I have yet to fully plaster all the cob projects I’ve done also speaks to the urgency of my learning this craft.

So what did I learn in Tempe’s class? Well, this whole time I’ve been struggling with lime plaster when earthen plaster would probably have been a better choice. The biggest difference between the two is that with earthen plaster you get to use your hands just like with cob. Having to use a trowel to apply lime plaster really slows me down. Don’t get me wrong. I still want to work with lime plaster. It’s better at resisting the eroding forces of water, making it the more lasting option. I just think right now earthen plaster is probably a better option for me.

Here’s what the wall in the picture above looked like after we applied a base coat of earthen plaster to it:

So much better, right? And that only took a couple hours. After the next coat or two, it will look even better.

One of the more exciting things I learned was how to make a natural paint that can be applied directly to drywall. Here’s what that looks like:

Notice the texture it gives the wall (Okay, you can’t really see it, but, trust me, it does.). Because it’s got more body you can use it to create all sorts of interesting elements to the interior walls of your house. Here are some examples of what’s possible:

All in all, it was great day. I learned a ton and met some great people. I can’t wait to start using all that I learned!

Get used to hearing the names Nocera and Kanan. They could become the next Watson and Crick. In the July 31 edition of Science magazine it was revealed that Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have created a process that makes it possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, using only the sun’s energy. In the second step of this process the oxygen and hydrogen are recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity capable of powering houses and cars.

Exactly how this gets done is a little beyond me. I’m just a farmer after all. But for those interested in reading more about this amazing discovery you should check out this article from MIT’s website.

Unfortunately, this technology is still a few years away from actually getting implemented, which, I guess, explains why it’s not on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Meanwhile, the demand to open up our country’s coasts to offshore drilling continues by those too short-sighted to realize the folly of such a plan, further proof that we are the dumbest animal on the planet. The answer to the world’s energy problem was right there in the sky this whole time, but none of us had the brains or vision to simply look up.

It has come to my attention through the Austin Permaculture Guild’s listserv that Masanobu Fukuoka, the pioneer of natural farming in Japan, died at his home in Iyo, Ehime Prefecture on Saturday. He was 95.

“I, as one of millions, will cherish and spread his memory as far and wide and well as I can for as long as I can,” Dick Pierce wrote in a recent email. “I know that people we teach will teach others, and others… so that the flame will grow, not wither. Truth is eternal. He humbly spoke the truth to all that would listen. In his passing, let us pray and work toward the day when all will listen.”

I take solace in these words because I know that, despite the fact that I will never learn directly from the man, I still have a chance to learn from those who learned from him. Fukuoka only entered my consciousness for the first time a month or two ago, but I now have a feeling that he’ll ever leave it.