The Call Of Nature

One year ago

For much of my life I have given very little thought to the onward journey of my faecal matter. This is no doubt due to the fact I live in a country with an abundance of toilets, all connected to a massive, sprawling yet largely hidden sewerage system. It is considered human 'waste'. We are simply not encouraged to examine our turds for indications of our gastric health; they fall below the water and begin to slip away down the pipe even before the flush whisks them forever from our sight and mind.

Living off grid has forced a change of my approach to this aspect of existence. In the very first week here last year, while my friends Matt and Mary were staying, we built a simple wooden structure with a sloping corrugated iron roof, below which I dug two holes side by side, each about three feet deep. The idea was simply to let my bodily secretions fall into one of these holes where over time it would rot and be reabsorbed by the soil and the roots of the blackthorn around.  However before I began to use it I noticed that after heavy rainfall the holes would fill up from beneath thus propelling anything residing within upwards and outwards. So, for my whole sojourn on the land last year I was cycling a mile up and down the hilly road to the service station toilet every time I needed to take a dump. Sometimes it was quite a close call.

You can perhaps imagine, then, my delight this week at having finally installed a workable solution under that same timber toilet block. It's a wheelie bin, semi-buried in one of the holes which I have enlarged to take it, so the top is at seat level. The top is covered with a large square of MDF board with a hole cut out of it, around which some veneer strips are hammered into place, and my toilet seat bolted on top. Ta-daaa! My very first compost toilet. Many moons from now it will become full, at which point I shall remove it and park it somewhere for a couple more years. The contents by then should be fully composted, transformed into a non-smelly and useful substance that can be used in the garden as a mulch.

The other great step forward has been the arrival of the largest net in the world. It covers the entire growing area, 64 metres by 12 metres. The two gamekeepers fixed it to one side of the the existing perimeter fence, and I helped them unravel it width-ways trying not to step on the raised beds and easing it over the runner bean frames and peas sticks. It was then fastened to the other side making a fully enclosed cage, with two wide access doors. Three ten-foot-high T-shaped struts have been placed down the centre to push the net well above head height.

Finally, a pheasant-proof place! The feeling of security on the inside is wonderful. All the little cages around the growing veg I have torn down. The Vegetable Zoo has become something more akin to an aviary, except the birds are on the outside not the inside. I just have to remember not to leave a door open...