When?

People tell me that I'll need it someday.  I'll need this thing, whatever it is.  I never seem to need it now, but one day in the future I will most certainly need it.  In the meantime I have to dust it and reach around it to get at my other things.  I think we have storage capacity for up to one year.  Anything that I'll need further in the future, I might have to rent.

How did so many get sold?

If you are interested in composting, one thing you don't need is one of these black plastic compost bins.  Our house came equipped with two of them.  What a wasp wasteland and fruit-fly frenzy!  An anaerobic mess!

Kitchen scraps had been tossed into two of these bins for who knows how long and the compost was suffocating.  Oxygen loving bacteria can't live in sealed plastic so the anaerobic (stinky) bacteria dominate.

 Compost needs to breathe and it also needs roughly 20 parts carbon (the brown stuff: leaves, newspaper, dried grass clippings...) for every 1 part nitrogen (the green stuff: kitchen scraps, slime).

We created a cylinder with chicken wire and bamboo stakes (which where previously used for deer control at our old place).  Now air can cycle through the pile.  We also layered in most of the leaves that had fallen into the backyard.

I'm not saying our method is perfect.  I can let you know how things went in the spring.  One good thing about this compost pile is it eliminates garbage.  Our kitchen scraps don't end up in black bags.  Our leaves don't need to be taken away as yard waste.  We even added failed transplants, some rotten cardboard boxes (with the tape removed) and other organic trash that could be found around the yard.  The smell is very much improved.

If anyone still feels like they would like a black composting bin, I can offer both of ours to you completely free!  I hear they are good for keeping rats out.

minimizing the number of houses

We slipped the keys through the mail opening at our old house last night.  It was a blessing/drag to have the opportunity to move the garden over a month.  Kitson dug the remaining potatoes quickly and got a touch sweaty.  I sat there pregnant and looked around.  Fields of ripe kale, chard, and tomatoes were left behind.

Just in time, our new garden is beginning to show signs of food.  The transplanted strawberries, raspberries, kale, chard, arugula, and lavender all seem to love it here.  "Irrigation," they sigh.  Next we have to figure out how to shut the darn tap off.

The last few weeks I've been admiring the beauty of the backyard.  It just seemed so lacking for food!  We're not used to landscaping but we are used to having the ability to pick something to have with dinner, if not our entire meal.

I imagine the work involved in owning more than one home.  Who wouldn't like a vacation getaway (but oh the maintenance)?  It is good to be reduced down to one home.