EcoZoic Detroit

Shifting our lifestyles to incorporate the use of our immediate surrounding natural systems in order to provide for our own basic needs and comforts is much more impactful to our long-term sustainability than worrying too much about smaller energy-saving gestures. If you pay attention to your landscape and begin discovering the value of the natural patterns around you, your energy usage will naturally decrease as a result of your learning to take control of meeting your own needs in a nondestructive manner. You will find that a natural extension of this work is an increased awareness of the nonrenewable resources you continue to consume, and you will find yourself turning down your thermostat and dimming the lights regardless.

So where do we get started in early November? Right now is a great time to gather leaves and other dead or dried out carbon matter from your own property--though avoid sticks or woody plants that have not been finely chipped/mulched--and from surrounding neighbors that intend to dispose of these materials, in order to grow excellent compost for planting your garden in the spring. Build circular piles of carbon matter, 1-2 meters in diameter and 3-4 feet high, adding thin horizontal layers of green/living materials (food scraps and weeds pulled directly from the soil you intend to feed your compost should do fine) to provide the nitrogen needed to attract the bacteria that will get a nice compost burn going (try a ratio of approx. 30 parts brown/carbon to each part green/nitrogen). You will want to add water to your piles as well, but just enough that if you were to squeeze a handful of your pile in your fist, you would release a drop or two of water. Adding weeds from the soil you plan to garden is great, as the weeds that are growing in your soil are naturally fixing the nutrients your soil needs for a healthy balance--part of their role in the forest succession process. However, if you do add weeds, it is important to make sure your pile burns hot enough to kill their seeds, so keep it active and moist.

Right now is the perfect time to initiate the process of healing the soil of your surrounding landscape through composting. Trucking in soil for your vegetable garden is not much more sustainable than trucking in food. We really need to be healing the organisms that sustain us, and composting is a great place to start. Eventually, you may choose to stack the functions of your compost and develop ways to utilize the heat that is a byproduct of your slowly burning compost. Start immediately to begin taking control over the production of one thing you use in your life that you know is not sustainable, and soon you will start to see how your solution can be leveraged to provide for more and more of your needs.