Thursday, April 5, 2007

How to Compost Interlude: Nature Tried to Kill My Composter

So, this week we drove up to my husband's former and much-beloved place of employ, Shelter Institute in Woolwich, Maine. At Shelter, still slightly skeptical, we purchased the floor model of the high-tech (it's all relative) supposedly continuous Sun-Mar 200 Series Garden Composter (doesn't it sound like a space ship?)

SIDE NOTE: A quick plug for the Shelter Institute...they are a very cool timber framing company that is also a school and a shop. You can go there and learn how to design, build, plumb, wire, and finish your own house. It's pretty spectacular.

Anyway, skepticism and all, we completed Step 2: Choose a System and I was completely ready to write today about Fred Horch's Step 3: Collect Organic Materials.

However, instead, on April 5th, I am going to go out and shovel a foot of snow and try to clean up all the falling branches that very nearly killed my brand new Sun-Mar 200.

In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, here's a fun link to a blog that gives you an astonishing number of ways to reuse your coffee grounds. (Kate goes way beyond composting. Try scrubbing pans, fridge deodorizer, playdough, a Halloween "beard"?...and that's just scratching the surface!) And here's one from Mom Is Teaching about how composting & other dirty hands-on fun can be a great way to teach science to kids.

Stay tuned for Step 3 next week.

THIS IS APRIL 5TH, PEOPLE!:
Missed anything in this series? It's easy to catch up:

Step 1: Make it a Priority
Step 2: Choose a System
Interlude: Nature Tried to Kill My Composter
Step 3: Collect Organic Material
Step 4: Mix the Materials
Step 5: Moisten the Mixture
Step 6: Wait
Interlude: The Lightbulb Change
Interlude: The Yogurt Change
Interlude: The Sponge Change
Interlude: The Leftover Change
Interlude: The Napkin Change
The Sort-of Sun-Mar 200 Review Part One
The Sort-of Sun-Mar 200 Review Part Two
Sun-Mar 200 Compost Update
Sun-Mar 200: Starting All Over Again

Step 7: Use Your Compost
Step 8: Sun Mar 200 Garden Composter Review

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Josie, did that branch take down your fence? We lost power for about 10 hours up here. Tough for April 5, I agree.

Josephine Cameron said...

Yup. Took out a whole section. I guess lots of people had branches down. I saw a bunch of people in the coffee shop today who still don't have any power. Sheesh.

Anonymous said...

It has been cold out West too, but today is just lovely...doesn't it make you appreciate sunshine!

Mom Peg