When it was time to make compost, sheathed in protective gear, I’d drag the machine to where all the garden debris was stacked, fiddle with various knobs and levers, and then yank on a cord to fire the beast up. Its roaring and shaking was tremendous, its appetite for chewing bunched stalks to pieces so insatiable I called it Beelzebub, after the prince of demons and of dung. When our place was open on the island’s annual home and garden tour, I lugged it out to be admired by the guys who’d come along with their wives despite having little interest in gardening.
Our compost heaps, composed of alternating layers of the shredder’s green gold, along with kitchen scraps and output from our composting privy, were creations of incontestable excellence. Within days of construction, they’d be steaming with heat, and would eventually convert their contents into rich, dark, crumbly compost. At the very heart of that great transformation, and thus at the heart of the garden itself, squatted the shredder.
But, unhappily, and it seemed tragically, this epoch of excellence came to an abrupt end. I was out in the yard shredding dutifully on a bright spring afternoon when suddenly there came a sharp clattering and godawful banging inside the chamber. I shut the machine down and investigated, dismayed to discover that half the great whirling blade had sheared off completely. I dragged the mutilated shredder to a machine shop but was told that repair was impossible because of the way the chamber had been welded together originally. In one fell stroke, like Lucifer banished from heaven, I’d fallen from paradise. In anybody other than a gardener, post-traumatic stress disorder might have been an inevitable reaction to this stunning turn of events.
Ah, yes, the uninformed observer might remark, but surely you can acquire another shredder and carry on as before? Alas, no. For my disabled shredder had been one of a kind, a unique contrivance of muscular brute force whose like will not be seen again. Part of its efficiency derived from a complete disregard for safety issues—a moment’s inattention might easily have cost me a few fingertips or even a whole hand—whereas commercial models seem designed primarily to prevent anyone from losing a fingernail and then suing the manufacturer for millions. I’ve examined some of the shredders for sale at respectable retail outlets, but they have excited only dismay and contempt. To replace our masterpiece with one of those abysmally flimsy knock-offs would be to concede that the universe is unfolding in ways that you would rather it not.
An added consideration, admittedly, is that the old shredder was a carboniferous monster, gulping oil and gasoline and spewing out polluting fumes like our own private tar sands. The biosphere is a better place without it. I like to imagine that in the days to come some inventive genius will design a solar-powered shredder or, in a perfectly closed loop, a shredder powered by the methane gas emitted from the compost heap.
In the interim, we’ve parked the decommissioned shredder in an out-of-the-way corner as a monument of sorts. Meanwhile, I’m reduced to a more hands-on and time-sensitive approach to compost making. For a while, I tried chopping leggy plant material by hand, employing an axe blade that’s welded onto the end of a steel pipe and driven down vertically, as though one were pounding maize. But the work was arduous and primitive and roiled my heart with unseemly longing for the old days of shredding. Determined not to complain, nor to brood unduly over all that’s been lost, instead we worked out a system in which woody material like raspberry canes or fireweed stems no longer go into the compost heap, but rather are consigned to a solitary spot where they’re free to take as long as they require to rot down. Everything else—leafy greens, kitchen scraps, the compost-privy products—goes into the compost heap as before, but in a far quieter and more dignified fashion. Truth to tell, I don’t really miss the roaring of Beelzebub, nor its noxious fumes, nor the sense of frenzy its clamouring induced. Once again, the making of compost is a more poetic, less mechanized affair. I see this as one small personal step away from fossil-fuel dependence and toward a cleaner and quieter environment, a transformation of loss and grief, if you will, into new and improved possibilities.
Barrowing Along
Sometimes it feels as though the gardener’s principal occupation is the picking up of materials, often heavy or bulky, and transporting them across uneven ground in order to deposit them someplace else. In this work, few tools prove more dutiful than the wheelbarrow. Known as far back as ancient Greece and China, for thousands of years the wheelbarrow has done its work with primitive but marvellous simplicity. More essential than sexy, it trundles faithfully behind the scenes while other fads and fashions flutter for the cameras.
Around our workplace, we’re a two-wheelbarrow family. One unit is built like a Sherman tank, with rugged steel frame and heavy-gauge steel bucket. During the thirty-plus years we’ve had it, this brute has moved more weight than the builders of Stonehenge. Its old bucket is now perforated with rust holes, but it barrows on and I dread the day when it can go no farther. The other is a younger and flimsier affair with a smaller wheel, wooden frame and a lighter-gauge steel bucket. It’s what passes for a wheelbarrow nowadays and dozens of its type line the entranceways of big-box stores in spring. Some have a polypropylene bucket. Some have two wheels. None impress. For sturdiness is of the essence, and a good wheelbarrow—like our old trustworthy—should last for decades, if not generations. The built-in obsolescence of the flimsy barrows now on offer is an insult to the great legacy of barrowing and contemptible to any true-blue barrow-man or -woman.
One of my main barrow tasks is wheeling in the winter firewood. No road penetrates our woodlot and the big barrow is perfect for navigating narrow footpaths and rolling over tree roots (something at which low-slung and long-snouted ersatz barrows are hopeless). It’s work enough getting in the hundred-plus loads required to fill the woodshed every autumn, without the added aggravation of periodically ramming into a protruding rock or root.
Moving massive stones from place to place often requires innovative measures. If a stone’s too heavy to be picked up and placed in the barrow, I use a roll-and-jerk technique, much like an Olympic weightlifter. The barrow is laid on its side and the stone rolled onto the edge of the bucket. Then bucket and stone are jerked upright together. If a hernia isn’t induced by the lifting, it may be by subsequent wobbling around with the overloaded barrow. Tipping techniques can be tricky too. Unless meticulously tipped, a load of precious compost or fresh cement may disgorge sideways, entirely missing the intended point of deposition.
The Old English noun “barrow” also means a hill or hillock, but wheelbarrows and hills don’t go well together. Pushing a loaded barrow uphill can bring a dismaying sense of gradual momentum loss, followed by teetering uncertainty as inertia’s about to defeat you, then a grunting stall. Getting a running head start at an impending incline sometimes helps. Descending a hill, the opposite’s true, as gravity tries to wrench the barrow from your grip and send it careening downhill. Disaster can sometimes be averted by pressing the barrow legs into the earth to try to brake the runaway barrow. On wet or icy ground the downhill slide may be a thing of terrifying beauty.
Mastering the intricacies of barrow operation can take longer than getting a medical diploma. Novices may be observed repeatedly picking up items and carrying them over to a barrow, rather than wheeling the barrow to where the items are. Some people take years to figure out it’s easier to point a barrow in its intended direction before loading it up. They’ll load to the brim and then get a herniated disc trying to turn the barrow around. Or they’ll load up in a spot so tight it can’t be turned around at all. Dragging a barrow backwards indicates an education considerably short of complete. Strategic reversing, on the other hand, is indicative of a sophisticated wheeler. When our woodshed’s almost full, I take satisfaction in first wheeling around and then reversing into the shed’s narrow passage so that pieces can be conveniently unloaded without a knee-knocking barrow intervening.
In the end, disposition of an old wheelbarrow requires careful consideration. Our first barrow was an ancient contraption with a steel wheel but no tire and a flat wooden bed into which wooden sides could be slotted. When we replaced it long ago, we burned it—only to later discover in a posh gardening magazine a photograph of an identical model gaily painted and planted with nasturtiums and available for a small fortune. So when in due course another old barrow came our way, we gussied it up with fresh paint, filled its bucket with objets