The Ozarks Boy’s way to compost

First, dig a hole and put in your table scraps.

Serious gardeners compost their waste, according to what I hear, and if you go and search online it is true. Those people who compost are serious. They are willing to spend some serious cash, some serious time and some serious effort.

Now, The Ozarks Boy takes his garden and yard as seriously as he can, given his work schedule, family responsibilities and budget availability, which are heavy, multiple and low, respectively.

Consequently, the old boy has to compost quickly, easily, effortlessly and cheaply. He has a good way to build soil through composting, and he does it without spending much time, only a little effort and no money on a lot of expensive equipment like drums and tumblers.

He just digs two holes.

When he started composting a couple of years ago, The Ozarks Boy dug a hole about the diameter of

the length of his shovel handle and just shy of a foot deep. Into that hole, he threw a bunch of kitchen scraps—old leftover vegetables, peelings and rinds, empty corn cobs, lots of coffee grounds and paper filters from the coffee pot. He really guzzles the coffee.

Then dig another to cover it.Start filling the second
hole with garbage. When.it is full of garbage, dig
out the first hole again, covering the fresh garbage.
Then, start filling that "new" hole with garbage.

When that hole was about half full or so, he dug another hole the same size next to it and threw the dirt from that hole into the first hole on top of the kitchen scraps. He then used that new hole to dispose of new kitchen scraps. When it was about half full of vegetable waste, coffee grounds and the like, he dug out the first hole and threw the dirt into the second hole.

He did that all summer long, back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t that difficult. There’s only The Ozarks Boy and the woman he lives with, his wife, who make kitchen scraps. So, he wasn’t out there throwing dirt back and forth every day, just every week or two or sometimes three.

In the late fall, early winter, he dug out one of the holes just a little deeper, piling the dirt into the other hole, and then used that hole all winter to dispose of the garbage. By spring, it was pretty full and ready to be covered up with dirt from the other hole.

That dirt had been sitting all winter and into spring, so most of it was ready to be used for seeds and young plants.

Well, there you go. That’s all there is to The Ozarks Boy’s Way to Compost. That’s pretty simple and easy, perfect for The Ozarks Boy who is kind of lazy. He’d rather sit on the front porch with the dogs and cats, drinking coffee and reading the paper, than get out and do much digging.

A Memorial Day memory

At the big-box home-improvement store where I worked in Pulaski County, Missouri, the corporate office gave store managers across the nation the opportunity to select a music channel for overhead system that would play American music on Memorial Day, Labor Day, Independence Day and, as I recall, Veterans Day.

Fort Leonard Wood is in Pulaski County, so the store managers who were there at the time I worked in that store always wisely selected to use that channel.

To the consternation of young people, it played Sousa marches, great old folk songs, patriotic country songs and the like.

I love that music, and I was glad the store managers chose that channel.

One year we had a new manager who was there on Memorial Day, if I remember correctly. He had not been there long, but long enough to know to select the American patriotic music channel for the overhead that holiday.

His name was Jared, and I had not introduced myself in the two weeks or so that he had been there, so I took that opportunity that day.

After introducing myself and welcoming him to the store, I said, “Jared, I think this holiday patriotic music is great, and I thank you for it. And I’d like for you to pass the word upstairs to the corporate leadership that I and a lot of other local people like it.”

He said he would do that.

Then, I could not help myself. I added, “The only thing I would change is that at noon, we ought to play the Chinese national anthem in honor of all the ‘Made in China’ products we sell here.”

He just looked at me, kind of quizzically.

I grinned and said, “See you later, sir,” and I went back to work.

A few days later my supervisor said at our morning team meeting, “Jared said to me the other day, ‘That Ozarks Boy is pretty opinionated, isn’t he?’ I told him you had been a newspaper writer for about 30 years, so opinions just come natural to you.” Then she laughed.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I avoided Jared after that, as often as I could.

I hope you had a Happy Memorial Day!

Poem: A visit from the preacher

Last month, I thought quite a bit about an old boy who I greatly admired and passed away on Feb. 4, 2019

His name was Lloyd Riley, and people at church called him “Bud.” He was a deacon at the small country church where I am a member and have attended off and on since about 1986.

Bud and I were in the Adult Men’s Sunday School class with a bunch of other old-timers. They’re all good men who work hard and have a lot of faith. I try to emulate them, and I usually fail.

Bud was a veteran; he was in the Army, apparently at the tail end of World War II, and he told of going by ship to Japan on a vessel that leaked so badly that everybody had to grab a bucket and keep bailing water to keep the old craft from sinking.

He owned a farm, raised cattle and hay. He told of raising hogs for a while, as well as dairy cattle. He told us about driving a truck for a dairy, going from farm to farm collecting milk in cans.

Bud and the other men in the class told me about days when everybody would raise hogs, milk dairy cattle and raise beef cattle. Having all three would help them to pay off their farms and maybe buy a truck.

Agriculture has changed a lot since then. Nobody here raises hogs or dairy cattle any longer. There is no dairy.

Bud and his wife, Doris, worked together on their farm. My wife always said they were the cutest couple she’d seen. Their children and grandchildren were involved in agriculture, too. I took pictures of their grandchildren who exhibited cattle at the county fair.

Bud also had a great sense of humor. We laughed a lot at the short stories and jokes he would often tell. He told me the best joke ever, in my opinion, one Sunday after church while we were sitting in the fellowship hall waiting for a church dinner to start.

I loved that joke, and I retold it in my column for the local daily paper years ago. I may have written about it twice in the paper, I can’t remember. I also wrote about it in my column for my own publication, The Ozarks Chronicle, a dozen or so years ago.

If I were a columnist for the weekly paper I now work for part-time, I’d write it up again.

I was unable to attend either the funeral or the visitation due to work requirements for my two jobs.

But since Bud’s passing, I’ve thought a lot about him, and I decided the only thing I could do to pay tribute to him is set his joke, my favorite joke, to poetry and retell here on this website.

So here is the poem, based on Bud Riley’s joke, with my enhancements based on my own grandparents and my imagination.

Yes, it’s a joke, but it has a lot to say about a particular Christian doctrine, which is referred to in the title I have selected.

I hope you enjoy the poem, look up the scripture in the title and think about it.

For best effect, read it aloud with great vigor and expression.



JAMES 2:17
Dedicated in memory of Lloyd “Bud” Riley, 1927-2019

Late Saturday morning, just ’fore dinner,
we were sweating out in the hot sun,
hoeing eternal rows in the garden,
it sure wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

We heard a honk, looked up and we all saw
a fancy-pants car turn in the drive
Grandma turned to grandpa, said, “Can that be
the preacher? Goodness gracious, sakes ’live.”

And sure enough, the ole boy that emerged
was the Reverend Brother Les Moore.
I guess as preachers go, he was all right,
but his very presence made me sore.

“Why, howdy, folks,” he said. “Gimme that thing.”
And grabbing Gramp’s hoe, he chopped some soil.
Thirty seconds later, wiped his brow, said,
“You work up hunger with honest toil.”

“Well, let’s go in for dinner,” Grandma said.
So we washed up and sat down and prayed
Then ate cold fried chicken, tater salad,
cornbread, tea, all of it Grandma-made.

The preacher was quiet while he wolfed it
down, then leaned back, loosened his waistband.
“Brother, sister, you and the Lord have done
a wonderful job on this good land.

You and the Lord built a fine cattle herd,
a beautiful house, large barn, good shop,
pastures of plenty and a garden, too,
and you will sure want to share your crop."

Grandpa heard all he could stand, then rared back
and said, “Preacher, I’m grateful to God
for all the blessings He has given us,
like good seed, nice weather and rich sod,

but most of all for our strong arms and backs,”
he said, grinning like a little elf.
“Cause you ought to’ve seen the way this place looked
when the Lord had it all to Hisself!”

The Good Lord God Almighty blessed Bud and Doris Riley and their family, and I hope you believe in Him and trust Him as they did—and do.