The Wealth Pile in Front of the House

          When I was in high school the local parish priest taught religion class one day a week.  He was Irish and had the one in a life time trip overseas to his ancestral home land.  Father Denis enjoyed reliving this trip with my junior year class in great detail.  When he went on to explain that each rural home had a large pile of manure in the front or side yard. We all looked shocked and feel pity for such backward people.  Then he explain that they considered it their wealth pile.  It fertilized their field and made them prosperous.

Where is the farmhouse, where is wealth pile?

           Any small truck farmer today and all urban gardeners like myself knows that recycling of kitchen food scabs, chicken manure and mulch from the leaves and wood chips are the answer to successful gardening.

           The large wheat fields of today are the possible with petroleum.  What happens to this landscape without the  subsidies of fossil fuel industry?  What happens as the world demands out paces the resource for this type of fertilizer?

            There is a strangeness to this landscape.  There is little sign that humans life in this part of the country.  The field meets the roadway without a fence or a weed.  The view from a hill top can reach 25 miles and there maybe one  building to be seen. Where are the people that plant this field, where do they live?  Do they walk the land or touch the wheat heads?

          I think like big banks, big fields have a short life cycle, they are unsustainable.