ORGANIC: Composting suburbia

We drove past a gypsy encampment in the south of England when I was about four years old – I don't remember it, but I do remember vividly what my father told me about the gypsies' tradition as we drove on down the road. He said when gypsies camp on your land, they help themselves to vegetables from your fields – whatever they need to eat, no more – and then (and this made a deep impression on me), before they leave, they bury their waste in between the rows, in the fields where they took the vegetables.