![Composted mind]()
Jana Fröberg has spent this spring with Kultivator,
working out compost and cultivation plans. She has studied art as well as gardening.
In a close collaboration between human and microorganisms, materials can slowly be processed into something very valuable. Human only have to create the right conditions, and so specific microbes will show up to do what they’re best at. According to what you set up, a pot of sauerkraut may be produced, or else you stand there, just waiting for compost to happen.
Compost derives from the same word as composition, meaning it’s a pleasant and beautiful mix of materials such as carbon and nitrogen, waste and manure as well as of life and death. No one seems to know where the borderline goes between these two opposites. Maybe simultaneously to the decomposition happening, new humus is built up. Anyhow this humus is of fundamental importance to all life on earth. It’s where it starts, and where it ends.
Composts can be constructed in many different ways.
At the time of my arrival to Dyestad,
all earlier composts lay well hidden under a thick layer of snow.
So it stayed for many weeks, and so I stayed inside
dreaming about the different compost types that could possibly fit into the area.
Lövkompost –Leaf compost
Förkompostering –Pre composting tombola
Färdig limpa –Open compost
Som en del av växtföljden –Compost as part of crop rotation
Stallgödselkompost –Horse manure compost
Allmänning/kompostplats –Common land / composting space
Maskkompost –Worm compost
Bokashi
Isolerad behållare –Isolated bin
18-dagars compost –18-days compost
Upphöjd kompost–I kombination med varmbänk –Compost in combination to a heated cultivation bench
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During fall gardens are normally covered with leaves.
Leaves are rich in carbon and normally use a long time to be totally decomposed.
Further they don’t have as much nutrition as fresh food waste or manure,
but composted they turn into the perfect texture and matter for sowing seeds.
Fresh food can favourably be kept in a closed compost bin as a start,
to prevent rats and other animals to play around too much.
Beside an out door kitchen in this garden stands an old cement-mixer,
making up the perfect first-stop-space for fresh and rich food scraps.
Not so smelly material, as well as pre composted food waste,
can be put together in an open pile and left to stand for about a year.
Compost is often put together during fall,
and in spring it’s good to turn the compost over
and mix the materials thoroughly to balance the process
that is always strongest in the middle.
Compost can be done anywhere,
but some places suites it better.
Close to trees that gives shade and shelter from heavy rains is good,
but you should avoid a too close contact to conifers.
Another aspect is where the waste is produced and how far you actually fancy to move it.
Including compost in a crop rotation means less heavy work for yourself,
and a good year of rest for the crops.
The coming spring you turn the compost over
so it’s well decomposed when the cultivation season starts.
Pumpkins are a good example of what likes to grow in rich, compost soil.
When cleaning out the horse stable all shit is put in a pile.
Manure from different animals consists of a different compound of nutrients,
and for example horse manure works very strong immediately
which is hard for a cultivated crop to handle.
Others do naturally work a bit more smooth and even during a long period.
When composting manure, nutrients such as nitrogen unfortunately leak out into the water,
but much is also bound into less easily soluble compounds.
This way the shit transforms to a great fertiliser for cultivation.
Right next to Kultivator’s place in Dyestad,
lies the village’s former common land.
Just being a corner between the dirt road and the horse paddock,
people used to meet here when coming to collect water from the well.
During the last years, several efforts have been made to make it a social space again
by furnishing it with benches and the like.
Not really working,
I suggest turning it into a common compost land,
where those who want can leave their waste,
and those who needs soil or fertilisers can come to get some.
Arriving at Kultivator’s place
it took me a couple of days before I asked about their compost system.
About the same time the first snowstorm hit us.
Still we could put food waste in their worm compost that they keep inside the kitchen.
No smell, but a fast production of humus.
Bokashi is an alternative to compost.
In opposite to traditional composting you create an anaerobic environment for the waste in a covered bin.
There you inoculate a specific mix of bacteria
that commercially goes under the name Effective Microorganisms, EM.
These will start a fermentation of the material,
which therefore visually will keep it’s look like during a preservation of vegetables.
The liquid created can be used as fertilizer for plants,
and the material dug down in the garden will attract and activate a good mix of bacteria,
and this way make the soil more alive.
Well down in the earth the waste will fast be decomposed.
This compost bin was built by Kultivator a few years ago and has been used since,
by continually filling it with fresh food waste.
It’s built in an isolating material,
and also during winter there has been a path in the snow from the veranda door to here.
When putting together an 18-days compost,
I used this pre composted material as one important ingredient.
In the bottom the material was already well composted,
and could have been used directly as a fertiliser.
As soon as spring discreetly arrived,
I put together a compost meant to be ready in 18 days.
This became the big entry of an end,
and the completion of something not yet started.
An 18-days compost is a perma culture method to fast get a ready compost / fertiliser.
By combining many different components,
building it high and turning it each second day,
you can activate the microorganisms so much
that you’ll have a ready compost soil in only three weeks.
Since spring didn’t show up this spring,
and I had come here to do garden work,
I thought about different ways to construct warmer microclimates.
One of them was to set up a compost in a cultivation box built by stone,
on top of which a shelf for pot plants could be put.
The whole creation would then be covered with glass,
and so sun would heat the sowing from above and compost from underneath.
see the site for more info
http://www.friendfarm.org/blog/
Friend connections between farms
Micro-cooperations for the global
cultural Future of the rural!
The new multinationals
As a visionary, critical project Friendfarm
want to question the structures of globalized economy,
and discuss more sustainable relations between
farms and people over the globe.
With support o f 
Supermarket public brainstorm
15-17 Februari, Kulturhuset in Stockholm
The studytrip
Uporoto Farm walk
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Uporoto Farm work
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Uporoto welcome ceremony
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Galijembe primairy school
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Study visit ASAS dairy farm
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Planting in Dar es Salaam
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we were one of the exhibitors of
Cartographies Of Hope: Change Narratives
http://www.dox.cz/en/
"It's not the story of the battle; it's the battle of the story!"
Patrick Reinsborough
In the last few years we have witnessed how the corrosion of the three main modes of social imaginary that defined modernity – the market economy, the public sphere, and the self-government of citizens – has reached a critical point. As a result, the increasing number of people in different fields, social scientists, artists, public intellectuals, and activists are calling for rethinking and reinventing social change. Such voices, however, are too often fragmented in their respective boundaries, and, consequently, they have not yet been able to articulate a compelling alternative metanarrative that the public would identify with and which would thus result in a major positive change.
The project Cartographies of Hope: Change Narratives was born out of the sense of urgency and the effort to address this situation. It seeks to bring attention to this condition and to call for joint effort to identify alternatives we can agree. The premise of the project is that narratives of social imaginary play a key role in generating positive changes. Social change is always seen as a certain story, which then becomes an important driver of the change itself. This double function of reflection and agency constitutes
a methodological core of the project.
The last couple of decades have been characterized by the dominant influence of neo-liberal ideology, notably by its narrative about the market mechanisms as natural principles penetrating all fields of social life, including education, healthcare, science, and art. The result is rising inequality, thinning social cohesion, and the fragmentation of polity. In this situation, to simply critique and historicize the neo-liberal system is not enough. We need to connect alternative narratives into a coherent whole –
a metanarrative that would provide us with a sufficient social cohesion
on one hand and openness and hope on the other. The project Cartographies of Hope: Change Narratives comprises of an exhibition, two conferences, workshops, and discussions. Its objective is to map different narratives of social imaginary and to start connecting them to a coherent bigger story, as well as to develop networks and shared databases of individuals and institutions associated with those narratives on local and international levels. The exhibition is organized in several sections and subsections that represent diverse narratives of change, while their sum and sequence indicate a larger picture that may inspire thinking about a new metanarrative:
1. Multitude of social change (local and global, fast and slow, generational and inter-personal)
2. Crises (ecologial, financial and economic, political, moral)
3. Disrespect and protest (forms of disrespect: injustice, inequality, unfreedom, forms of protest, protest movements)
4. Social imagination (solidarity and participation, moral and political dimensions of economy, global respect and justice, humanity and nature)
Exhibiting artists:
Daniel García Andújar, Kader Attia, Eva Bakkeslett, Michael Bielicky and Kamila Richter, Matthew Connors, Teddy Cruz, Amy Franceschini, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Michael Joaquin Grey, Ingo Günther, Toril Johannessen, Fran Ilich, OS Kantine, Krištof Kintera, Kitchen Budapest, Kultivator, Suzanne Lacy, Steve Lambert, Daniel Latorre and Natalia Radywyl, Lize Mogel, Naeem Mohaiemen, Nils Norman, Christian Nold, Sascha Pohflepp and Karsten Schmidt, Morgan Puett, Oliver Ressler, Abu Bakr Shawky, Superflex, Terreform ONE, Krzysztof Wodiczko, The Yes Men and Ztohoven.
