Monday, June 29, 2009

The compost bin

So, in my previous post I told you that we built a compost bin. Its something that I have been wanting to do for a while now. Before I had the bin I composted some, just into the rhubarb patch,things like food scraps, apple shavings, rhubarb leaves, some banana peels... basic stuff. But now, anything that will compost goes into the bin, coffee grounds, egg shells, leftover dinner, along with the apple shavings, banana peels, and rhubarb leaves. We also toss in there the grass clippings and used sawdust from the chicken pen. And the best part of it is I believe that most if not all of the materials used to build the bin were from recycled or repurposed items.

I started with 4 boards I salvaged from my grandfathers broken down barn (see the faded red paint on the front one!), 4''x4'x1/2''. I nailed them together with posts in each corner that were taken from some old pallets to form a box. I then took some lathe (skinny little boards used for walls) that were left over from another project and nailed those to each side along the top edge. I wrapped the whole thing in chicken wire that was left from the building of the chicken coop. I set it up behind the garage/barn and that is where all our compost goes. I feel so green! It all only took about an hour to build and it has saved on throw away trash. So join me in my "green movement" and do something great for the environment!
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

2 comments:

Susie Buetow said...

Cool! We live in a small town but no space to do a compost bin! This looks great!

Pamela Dent said...

I need to get mine started again I had one once but it was too far away from the house and in the winter we didn't use it as much. I never did much with the compost but it did feel good not to fill up the garbage bag a soon.