Composting is my favorite ritual because it pervades my daily life to include my time indoors and during the winter; it’s such a wholesome process that its scope is not limited by being at the farm. All year long, I gather organic materials from my food scraps when cooking, to my coffee grinds and tea bags, to the yard waste in my backyard, like grass clippings and raked leaves. These materials, when mixed together with the right amounts of oxygen, water, and bacteria, become dark, soft, nutrient-rich soil.

The first time I made a compost pile, I did not fully grasp how a two-foot tall pile of waste was going to turn into soil. I never really took the time to think about or watch something decompose and break apart, especially in the context of the farm where the primary goal is that of creation via growing. Yet, this process is a creative outlet that had to be appreciated when I ran my fingers through that new, fine, dark soil after painstakingly digging through the light brown, compacted clay dirt of which the half-acre farm consists.

The wonderful part about composting is that it is the gardener’s way of mimicking a natural process on a larger scale. Plants and animals die, they decompose, and then their nutrients and energy are transmitted to the development of other living beings through the soil; gardeners merely make the outcome of this process more visible because the product of this decomposition ends up being  in a large pile.

With several compost piles and dying plants surrounding me at the farm, I often think about the life cycle in connection with my own mortality. Lacking any religious affiliation, having skepticism about a heavenly kingdom, and not having many close family members or friends die, I have felt very lost about how to regard mortality and afterlives. Yet, I feel that, after observing the garden and the compost for a couple of years that the life cycle itself is my sacred answer to questions about my mortality. Just like the plants and animals around me,  I will live by the same cycle: I have been born and  am living, I will die, and then I will undergo a transformative rebirth.  My life’s energy will help to improve the soil, and in the life of a flower or a blade of grass, I will live on. Through the sacred life cycle that I feel spiritually connected and whole with the entirety of my environment, experiencing a sense of Oneness with all that is living.

Composting has offered me more than comfort concerning mortality, but also a way to think about the change in my life. Change is constantly happening around me, and I am constantly changing as an individual. Sometimes, changes have been hard to accept: when my grandmother remodelled her entire house, I felt as if the scenery of my childhood had been robbed fromme, and as friendships grew so distant that they could no longer be rekindled, I felt a deep sense of loss and lacked confidence in my ability to maintain friendships. Watching food scraps, weeds, leaves, and other organic materials become soil is the method in which change becomes an acceptable occurrence to me.
I see each weed as a stressor in my life, each food scrap as a memory, each leaf as an impactful moment- these organic materials are products of my life. Some things are emotionally crushing; others are positive life changes. But, together they transform into something completely different and are no longer only individual moments. Together, they are the composted soil that represents me as a whole person. What was once a misunderstanding that resulted in the loss of a friendship becomes heightened empathy. What once was a struggle to complete a year-long project will become a boost in academic confidence. Every moment for me is a personal transformation, an opportunity to become a better and well-rounded person just like the dark, nutrient-rich soil that we gardeners help to make at the farm.

Compost is my symbol for transformation and wholeness. When I compost, I know that several things are going into this pile, but they will become a large mass of one whole substance. Nothing is ever singular, but rather comprised of a series of events or objects that together make a whole, and visibly seeing this in the garden helps me to understand the interconnectivity and transformations happening in my life.