Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind

Time to put this in the Public Schools Required Reading List!

Thankfully this is not your typical boring composting book!

The author of Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind has a very witty way of getting his point across regarding poop of virtually every kind. After all everything poops, farts or burps. The dilemma of late has been all about green house gasses and CFO's (Factory Farms where the animals pretty much stand knee deep in their own waste).

My disgust with our conventional food system is one of the reasons why I try to avoid supporting it. I do my best to support local Eco-Farms as much as possible for the products I don't produce on my own small family farm. 

A very good point made in this book that hit home is to not to let people like myself get caught up in creating our own little oasis of better animal management and land management (both include poop of course) and ignore what is happening in the outside world. After all some people are in concrete jungles, or most simply don't have a couple of acres where they can compost without upsetting their neighbors.

I have been composting for many years now. I keep it pretty simple by just having various piles of different ages.  No temperature checks or anything else. I simply don't have the time. Thanks to my use of all natural kitty litters (I was using fine wood litter by Okocat which I love, it even comes in a box vs. a plastic bag, but it tracks something terrible. I've recently switched to fine walnut hull litter by Naturally Fresh. It tracks much less, clumps aren't as strong as Okocat, odor control is longer than Okocat, it comes in a plastic bag), I even compost my cats litter box waste. I do not use compost this for any of my food crops, but I do use it for non edible flowers and the like. Even the menfolk wee outside.

Thankfully this book discusses the taboo our society has in using cat/dog/human waste on our food and flowers. He provides enough information to enlighten the reader at how silly or as he puts it insane humans are. We behave as if crap is a vile evil thing that must hurriedly be flushed away as if it never happened! Why do we do that? Sure it smells but it's not going to jump up and try to kill us! As a society we really do act strangely when it comes to certain types of feces, especially our own. It was something I never gave any thought to until it was pointed out to me in this book. We humans really are a bit nutty.

This isn't a boring book with charts and percentages, temperatures your pile must reach, etc. It's not a science book on composting. Even so it is truly full of useful information no matter who you are; me with some land and farm animals, or a concrete jungle dweller, suburbanite, or a giant CFO. All of us can benefit from the advice given in this book. The author will make you laugh, shake your head and keep you reading.

What is fantastic to me is how the author discusses so many different types of feces. The animal they come from, the size and how easy it is or isn't to deal with. The cost of raising animals. Fencing issues. From horses to rabbits and the already mentioned humans. It really amazes me how he can be so informative without being dull and does it in a very little book! The ease of reading, the wealth of information and the humor make it a perfect book for High Schools. A little enlightenment just might be what it takes to improve our messed up food system and our own silly feces phobias.

This is a book worth sharing.