Straw Bale

Years ago, when I lived on a few acres, near Middletown, California, I had a large garden and kept chickens. I found a few forgotten straw bales under some trees at the edge of a neighbor's field; they were half rotted, and easily broke apart into "books," so-named by Ruth Stout, my gardening guru. I learned so much from her, "How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back," book all about doing a lot of gardening with little effort. I learned to plant seeds while hardly disturbing the soil, and to compost directly into the rows where the vegetables would grow the next summer.
When you cut the twine that keeps a straw bale in one piece, the twine pops and the bale relaxes along its length, gently falling open like a row of books. Then you place the straw books along the garden row that you've already covered with used chicken bedding saturated with manure. All winter long, you tuck kitchen scraps under the books, and by spring you have a row of delicious, new soil ready for seeds.
I do a much-modified version of that now. Much. I still mulch with straw and keep a compost pile, but I stopped putting kitchen scraps into it and even gave away my hens to discourage the rats that invaded our yard and the neighborhood a few years ago. The garden beds are smaller in my city yard, and I grow far fewer veggies, with so many farmers markets around. But I miss my hens and plan to get more one of these days, and I still love getting an occasional straw bale.
When we inherited a spotless, and practically brand-new Honda Accord ten years ago, I was aghast that it was black and had only two doors: what kind of car was that for a farmer? How can you haul straw bales in it?