Compost happens

Something I've been wanting to do for a long time is start composting. When we lived in Oakland, it seemed that half the trash we hauled down to the dumpster was vegetable matter. So when the City of Oakland started a municipal composting program, I was really excited. Unfortunately, they didn't provide the little composting buckets to apartments with more than 4 units. And because we didn't have much outdoor space, I was out of luck.

All that changed when we moved to Vermont and a 1.2 acre house, and I started a little compost pile within days of getting the boxes unpacked. I feel like we're diverting a lot of our trash away from the landfill now, and we only take out the kitchen garbage every couple of weeks.

Despite the virtuous feeling I get, I can't escape the nagging feeling that all I've really accomplished is to create a trash pile behind the garage. Maybe I'm just being impatient, but most of the things in the compost pile still look the same as they did when they left the kitchen. I've read a bit about carbon and nitrogen ratios, so I bought a rake to make sure we could put grass clippings and fallen leaves in the pile. I even bought a pitchfork so that I could turn the pile periodically. Things were starting to look up as winter approached. When I would turn the pile, the bottom layer looked a little more like soil than it looked like rotten vegetables.

Then December came. More to the point, then came one of the top five snowiest Decembers in Vermont history. Now I feel like I've created a frozen trash pile behind the garage. We keep adding kitchen scraps to it, but I doubt anything biological is going to happen until the spring. Luckily we won't be in a position to start a garden anytime soon. We did just have a bit of a warm spell and a lot of the snow melted, so maybe I'll give the pile a good turn this weekend. That should get things going!