Trying to be Environmentally Responsible

When we first moved into our house, there was a big empty trash bin in the back yard.....a perfect compost bin. I read about how you must balance the 'greens' and the 'browns', turn it on a regular basis, give it oxygen and throw some worms in to speed up the process. This garbage would magically transform into a nutrient rich substance that would fuel all of our plant life. After about a year of lovingly working the contents in this garbage can, I came to the realization that it was not working out as I expected. But I was not giving up.

On a trip out to Santa Fe, we went to the farmer's market and there was a whole stand devoted to composting! Perfect, I thought, these were the experts I needed. After about a 30 minute conversation, I was convinced that we needed dump the contents of the trash bin (which had now multiplied to 2 bins----but we don't need to dwell on that) on to the ground, surround it with bales of hay and then add the 200+ worms I purchased from the Santa Fe composters. Now, I was home free! I thought, it could only be a couple months before we are offering up our rich composted materials to all of our favorite gardeners.

I guess each of you noticed, there was never a blanket offer for fresh compost.

I have finally admitted defeat. In the two years since we started this project, I have managed to extract one small bucket of usable compost. One small bucket! And it wasn't even fully composted.....there were clearly egg shells and unidentifiable chunks. I guess persistence is both a curse and a blessing.

Needless to say, I broke down and purchased an automatic, indoor composter. It has been 2 weeks, and it looks like we may have fresh, usable compost in about a week. In three weeks, I will have extracted as much out of my automatic composter, as I did out my two year project.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the pile of shit in our backyard.