Com Post

My husband did the unthinkable! Something I thought he'd never do in a million years! He bought me my very own COMPOST MIXER for Christmas! I was so excited! And I think its awesome that he knew I would love it. :) Not all girls would be as excited about this.

I've been talking for a while about planting a vegetable garden in our backyard. We just got a new fence that will hopefully keep the ZILLIONS of rabbits in our neighborhood out of our yard. So now the digging and planting can begin! And hopefully the homemade fertilizer will be ready pretty soon!

Here she is! We put her together about 4 weeks ago.

Then I had to learn how to make compost! The brown/green ratio should be at least 2:1 and not more than 3:1.

Brown: All we had was leaves and twigs in the yard
Green: Kitchen scraps (guts of a spaghetti squash, carrot peel, old celery, egg shells etc...)

I want my first batch to be completely unadulterated, organic compost. So only organic scraps.

I went out to add some more scraps one day when we had all the snow and ice, and the mixer (plus all the compost inside) was frozen solid. I couldn't turn it or open it. Freezing temps are not good for the decomposition process. So my 4-6 week project will probably take double the time since we are just now getting a little sunshine and warmer temps. Just for cuteness sake... Leah calls it "Mommy's Compost" and she desperately tries to turn the handle on it, but it's too heavy. She will be helping me spread it on our "crops" this spring and summer though! I can't wait to get good and dirty!!!

I checked on it this week, and the contents are now nice and black like they should be, but everything is still recognizable. I'll take some more pictures of it soon. I know you can't wait!!!

I was slightly disheartened by the fact that the instructions that came with the mixer warned against putting dog, cat or human feces into your compost. Some things just don't need to be said, right?!? Though I guess it could be a little confusing since you CAN add the waste of vegetarian animals like chickens and cows. But I don't have much of that lying around.

I hope you enjoyed my compost post! Happy March!

(If you haven't voted for my sister's sheep yet, make sure you read the previous post and go vote! The voting ends today, March 1!)