THE Com POST

Weekly update: What a beautiful day in the garden! We spent the morning completely repositioning our compost bins. Three times a charm, right? This will be the last time we move our system but changes needed to be made to adjust to the scale of our operation. I’ll explain…

Over the course of the week we made a new connection with a man from Slidell with a lot of trees on his property. When he said he had bags and bags of raked up leaves he didn’t want to go into the Landfill, Lynne put us in touch. He wasn’t lying. We acquired about 20 bags of browns for our compost, which is a great gift considering all the green we now have coming on a weekly basis.

The rub?

We spend hours each week finely manicuring the property to keep it litter free. A big pile of filled trash bags out in the open just didn’t send the right message to onlookers, even if it is going to be put to good use. Needless to say we needed to do some prompt rearranging to come up with a solution.

We put some serious planning into the logistics of the space needed to store required materials and the ergonomics of it all. Turns out there was much more that needed to be considered than we originally thought. Where to store the bin of cardboard we are always rummaging through and frequently require? How much space is needed for a wheelbarrow to comfortably move around our soil? What about the bins from Compost NOW that we need to access and lock up when not in use? How is this all even possible and how can we think smart so we don’t need to do this crazy amount of work again?

We moved the system to the back of the yard and intend to construct some kind of wall to keep our compost piles and carbon piles out of site. It’s currently still a two bin system, but we’ve left ourselves room to grow. We’re learning. If we want to have an additional bin, there’s space, but we’d have to move the potting station, and that’s a problem for another day…

The best part of the day was meeting the neighbors that dropped off their frozen scraps. I met a woman who lives here part time and in Portland when the weather is right. We send her home with basil seedlings and an iris plant. I met a man that didn’t want any plants because he lived in an apartment, but was pleased to find out we were happy to take his cardboard. He’s going out of town but after I thanked him, he assured me will return with more next week. I met another woman who shared she was visiting the garden while her daughter was also napping. After meeting at the garden and taking about compost we have arranged a play date for our daughters to meet. A new mom friend? Who knew?

My point is this, nothing good comes easy and nothing bad comes from hard, honest work. And honestly, how hard is it really? I suppose it would seem weird the first time you dropped of your food scraps to meet the lady that wants to compost them. Putting yourself out there can be difficult, I get it. I suppose I could just compost our family’s waste and make it easier on myself. But I’m learning that putting in a little extra work pays off, big time. We’re diverting waste from our landfills and, introducing daughters to the power of caring for the environment. That’s not just a good day, that’s a great day.