In Which We Make Dirt (or Getting Smelly at Home)

You all know my lovely husband – intelligent, focused, diligent and focused. Intensely focused. I cannot quite describe what happens when he locks upon an idea or project. The first time this happened, we ended up with a composter that can withstand tornadoes. Our 1950s house will be flattened, but that composter will be standing tall.

Truly, this is a great character trait to have in a husband – if he does something, I know he will do it well. Of course, if we happen to be working on a project together, eventually I will reach a point where it is Close Enough, but of course it never is, and then I am @#^% out of luck and become grumpy.

That's one of the reasons this picture is so funny - while using the circular saw he cut through the cord. Ha!

Aww, dejected David.

After buying the house, we began the descent into Homeowner Projects. And a very well-researched descent it is. Anyway, so, we’re making dirt now. This is step 1 of 3 to turn our place into the Dyer Homestead. Perhaps we’ll get a tax credit.

All finished! It is a dirt palace!

No more digression! To make that lovely compost as cheaply as possible, we used a real simple design – the sides were made with used pallets, and David constructed a lid. Driving around town became like a constant Easter egg hunt. We’d be all dressed up, and one of us would reach across the dash and cry, “Pallet!!’’ Which would cause the other person to swerve across sometimes 4 lanes of traffic so I could fight with a raccoon over a pallet THAT INSTANT, sometimes in my high heels. Apparently we were worried the pallet police were going to swoop in and snatch up those valuable heaps of lumber if we paid attention to things like street signs and driving laws. Pshaw. Those are for those chumps that pay over $100 for an inferior composter at Home Depot.

Gotta have access to all that black gold we'll be making.

So here it is. There is all kinds of support and metal hinges and what have you in that thing.

David’s actually made another one, since we discovered this fall that established neighborhoods have trees that import leaves from other dimensions to drop in our driveway. Our ‘hold’ pile was just as big as our first one.

Who knows when we actually will get compost – I am basically just dumping whatever kitchen (non-meat/fatty) scraps and lawn clippings I happen to have at the time. This is completely by-passing things I should be paying attention to, like nitrogen balance and keeping it moist, but dang, the hose is really far away. David tries, but it is moving kinda slow.

Multi-opening capabilities!

Hopefully someday soon I’ll get on here and be way too excited about making dirt, something that has been happening naturally for eons, but now apparently I’ve decided it needs my help.