Monday, January 19, 2009

Who Loves Compost?!

Jerry built me these 2 compost bins that are 5' x 5'. A bit bigger than what I had intended, but they work well. The chickens spend a great deal of their time scratching and pecking and even the horse neighbor stops by to sniff.

Before chickens, it took about a year for us to turn garbage into compost. Now, it's right about a month. I clean the chicken's coop out every other week and add it to the bins. It breaks down faster than I ever thought it could. We are considering doing away with the bins and just heaping it into the garden.

We have a friend that has dozens of rabbits, but doesn't compost or garden, so her bunny poo is heading our way too. And, driving down the road, I saw 3 bags of leaves dumped in a ditch that I snagged. Into the compost it went.

At this rate, we'll have to start giving it away or selling it!

5 comments:

Janelle said...

This seems really interesting, I'm very interested in learning more about this. Although all food type items got to my pigs.

Leasmom said...

I really like that compost bin. I just put some wood on the ground to outline my compost area and it was quickly buried and little critters came and got what they wanted out of it. I need a bin like that.

Lanny said...

We love making dirt! Can you really have to much good dirt? My oldest daughter needs dirt so badly that she compost old clothes. So now I am too!

Anonymous said...

We just started composting last summer with a homemade bin I made out of 5 wood pallets. Recycling the pallets put them to good use and actually makes a nice bin. Living in North East Canada, I should have insulated the bin with straw bails before the cold and snow came though, that was this years lesson while learning more about winter composting ;o) You can't been good compost for gardening!

Melissa ~ Mom to 6 said...

Janelle ~ I'd do that too, if I had pigs. One bin is for the rabbit, hamster, gerbil bedding/waste. I've heard of putting it into worm bins, but we tried worms, twice. I couldn't get them going - I think I overfed them.

Patrice ~ It's just pallets that we found. They're oversized though. I've seen pallets for compost bins where you make 3 bin system. I just don't want to give up the space it would take.

Lanny ~ Clothes too?! Wow! I did finally get the kids to empty the shredder and the vacuum (bagless system) into the composter. Hadn't thought about clothes though.

Henri ~ I love making things with pallets. We used straw bales to insulate the chicken coop, but since the hens free range, they have turned the bales into giant nests. Composting is just so easy!