Yes, News!

I've just completed construction on my new sawdust toilet. It's out in the carport with the stain drying. I'll try to get up some pictures as soon as it's actually in operation but for some imaginary pics, just imagine a box about the size that a toilet without the tank might fit in. The box is made from oak plywood with a standard store bought oak toilet seat with brass hinges.

Though it has been in the planning stages for a few months since I read "The Humanure Handbook," I was forced to build the toilet after I found out I'd have to tear up the whole floor in my bathroom because of a water leak from the toilet supply line. That would leave me with no toilet for a few days or even weeks. So, I decided to build the sawdust toilet.

Construction was easy, though my toilet was a bit more complicated and expensive than "normal" ones are. In fact, if you can find some scrap lumber, old buckets, and a toilet seat, it would be essentially free. Mine cost $40 for the plywood, half of which is left over and $10 for the seat as well as some 2" screws, hinges and stain. My wife knows a woman whose husband is a carpenter, and they say we can have all the sawdust we want. I did have to buy buckets, but you can get those at any paint or big department store with a home improvement section.

Take a look around the internet for sawdust toilets and the theory behind their operation. It's basically a hot compost operation, allowing plenty of time to cook and cure. Then enjoy the richest compost you could imagine. After all the stuff I've read about composting toilets going wrong, I haven't found any complaints with the sawdust composting method, in fact, I've read a number of articles and stories about people who have been doing it for years.

The benefits are vast, especially from a sustainable living viewpoint. Think of all the water not wasted flushing the toilet, and all the energy and pollution saved from not treating that water both before and after the toilet. But the best part is that the nutrients go back into the garden or lawn or wherever you decide to put it. Returning the nutrients to the soil is something that rarely goes on in today's huge fertilizer fed farms.

I'll probably be using it for the first time some time tomorrow so I'll keep you up to date.

This poo's for you!!!
WiredForStereo

Hot compost experiment.

Ive been doing an experiment in the past few weeks. It's just lately been starting to be the time when I can mow the lawn, and I decided to do a little experiment with the lawn clippings and some shredded paper.

Last season, I had started a compost pile with some leaves and small branches and things, but I never got hot until I added some grass clippings from my friend's lawn. I didn't have a bagging mower at the time, so I couldn't add clippings from my own lawn. Also last fall, I had layed out a bunch of shredded paper as mulch to kill off the sod in my back yard with the intention of starting a garden this year. Now that I am moving, I've begun pulling all that mulch up and stacking it on the compost pile, and it seems to warm up, but just a little.

As a side note, the soil over which the paper sat is so full of worms that you can't dig in it without a massacre. It's so soft and dark now where it was hard and dry before.

Last fall, I obtained a bagging mower and this year, I have used it to collect the grass clippings. I had some more shredded paper in the garage, so I decided to use it and the clippings to make a very hot compost pile. I also had a piece of wire fencing laying around, so I decided to use that to make a bin instead of just a regular pile.

I have discovered this works very well, especially when watered a little bit. The first time I mowed the lawn, the clippings and paper, alternately layered, filled it up to the top. Within a week, it was down to half full. I did a second batch, and piled it above the top, and now less than a week later, the first batch is down to 1/4 its original size, and the new batch is down to half its original size. To be honest, I also have used the pile to compost some sludge from my worm composter when it failed last winter (it got too cold, rotted, and most of the worms bailed, I'm keeping it warm from now on.) I also have been composting food scraps, and by coincidence, a dead squirrel. The temperatures created just a few inches under the surface are amazing. It is almost enough to burn me.

I started this little experiment as a result of reading "the Humanure Handbook" which I have reviewed below. I think it is important to know how to maintain a good hot compost pile to be able to compost anything you need to, including food, non vegetarian manure, and even dead bodies.

Will the cops look in a compost pile?
WiredForStereo

the Humanure Handbook Critique.

Pictured here is the third edition of the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. I just finished reading it (not sure which version) online. Check the last post for the link. Click the pic for buying.

As you can see from the date and time on the last post which I posted sometime during the first or second chapter, it has not taken me long. I finished it this morning, and according to one guy, it can be read in 4 hours straight through. I didn't read it straight through, but I'd say it took about that long.

The book's subtitle is "a guide to composting human manure" and I'd say it's that and more. This you might call the real composting guide. Most books about composting or having a section on composting completely skip over the subject of human excrement, and most others look down on it with quite some disdain. Most composters recommend against composting a bunch of things, like kitchen grease, oils, fats, meat, pet poo, and dead animals, but Mr. Jenkins recommends and demonstrates composting all these things. His resulting compost is excellent, and his methods are tried and true for 20 years.

Now a word for you fecophobes. This book will trip you out. If disgusting things bother you, you will be bothered. If you are one of those people who likes to pretend you never crap, this book will mess you up. If you are an active minded person who wants to live sustainably, and believes that therein lies the solution for the future, this book will open your eyes.

The author begins by delineating the problems with today's waste processing systems. And believe me, there are alot of problems, and blindness to those problems. I believe this is beginning to be remedied with recycling programs that teach people that there is no such place as "away" or "out" where you can throw things. But the place that is still missing in people's minds is where "down the drain" ends up. Sure we see a sewage treatment plant now and again, and we catch a whiff o' that smell, but what really goes on there? Turds and stuff get turned into sludge and CO2, that's what.

Now if you are a global warming believer, this should just outrage you, because sewage treatment plants produce millions of tons of CO2, and there's no way you can remediate it. Plus, the sludge that's left over is nasty, with massive amounts of toxins and heavy metals and it just gets to be landfilled. That's no sustainable solution for anyone.

So what is the solution? Recycling our "waste" which is no waste at all. You all know I love composting toilets. Well, Mr. Jenkins takes that concept a bit cheaper and says compost your stuff in your back yard. And you know I love cheaper. He champions (and so do his followers and humanure believers) the concept of sawdust toilets. Basically, it's a 5 gallon bucket with sawdust instead of a toilet bowl. Same as a composting toilet, except you empty the "toilet bowl" when needed onto a properly managed thermophilic (hot) compost pile. Within hours or days, all active pathogens are dead, and the compost is well on it's way to being rich earth for your garden.

The benefits, cheap, easy, cheap, provides compost, cheap, easy, cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeap. The only problem is what Mr. Jenkins calls Fecophobia, the fear of poo. Most people are happy to pay for clean purified drinking water to crap in, flush it down to nowhere using a bunch more purified drinking water and forget it ever existed, and to pay for that service too. They are also happy to pay for food, eat it, then forget about all those wonderful nutrients that could go in their garden to make more food.

So what do we do? Read this book, (free online) and take it to heart except the small Christianity bashing section. Decide if you want to be part of the problem or the solution. If you want to be part of the problem, go ahead and stop there. If you want to be part of the solution, change your life. Don't be like hypocritical global warming hype politicians and celebrities who wont change their lifestyle to match their message *hmmph*algore*HHMHHmph*.

The solution is active care of the planet, not rhetoric; personal responsibility, not politics. The solution is you.

WiredForStereo

Compost...YEAH!!!

One of the most important parts of sustainable living is composting. With all that organic matter out there to be had, we cant just sit and let it rot. Yes we can, but it need to be in our yard to rot because not only will you have the nice compost when you're done, but the soil under the pile will benefit real good too.

There are lots of arguments about how to compost, whether to layer, or shred, or mix, or use worms. In this area I am a pluralist. All composts are good. My philosophy is get that stuff in my yard, it will all work out in the end.

This reminds me of a concept I've been trying to work together. It involves adding more organic matter to your soil than is taken away. For instance, you have a garden and a compost pile, and composting toilets. Your garden produces food, you eat the food, you redeposit the food in the toilet, which creates compost that you add to your garden where your food grows. At times, you don't redeposit the food in your own toilet, or you eat food that didn't come from your garden and deposit it in your own toilet. This creates an average 360 degree cycle. But, it is good for you to add organic material to your system that came from another system. For instance, collecting your neighbors leaves and composting them.

Every year, literally millions of tons of leaves fall, and most in residential areas are cleaned up and disposed of. What a huge wasted resource. I read a story a while back where a man collected leaves using a giant vacuum attached to a horse trailer and put them in his garden. He had a free source of nutrients and his soil was awesome. I have really wanted to do this because I live in Arkansas, and most of the trees are deciduous but the equipment would probably cost a few thousand dollars to make new.

Another really awesome piece of equipment is a wood chipper. I have three trees, and in the process of pruning in the last 6 months, I have taken off nearly a cord of wood not including small branches and leaves. A wood chipper can turn a good portion of that to a nice organic wood mulch that you can put on your flowerbeds and walkways or include in your compost piles as brown matter. Unfortunately, to get a good one of these, you'll shell out a thousand or more new. It will probably be more economical and useful to borrow or rent one when your wood pile grows to be too large. There are also lots of older outdoor power machines with broken engines that it may be economical to buy a new or used engine to put on them. Part of living sustainably is taking care of your equipment so that it lasts the absolute longest amount of time possible. Use synthetic oil!!!

Lets review. Composting the the natural process by which organic material is returned to the earth providing nutrients and conditioning the soil so that it can better support life.

Do it.
WiredForStereo

Let's start with soil makers.

Sustainable living requires dirt. What if you dont have dirt? You'll have to make some. What to do, what to do. Ah worms. Worms commonly known as compost worms or red wigglers are a key part of a sustainable living plan. They can do many things, the best of which is eliminate waste.

In our blog, waste will be anything that leaves your residence that is not going to be recycled in a sustainable way. Basically anything besides metal. Paper doesn't count, plastic doesn't count, and neither do your children.

Fortunately paper doesn't have to be waste, because mixed with proper amounts of other things, worms eat paper. And what do worms make? Dirt. No matter what goes in one end of a worm, out the other end comes dirt. So, in my home, we shred the paper, mix it with food scraps, the worms eat it, and we get dirt. And considering the soil around here, we need dirt. Good dirt.

There are a number of ways to keep worms. A quick search will net you tons of websites that sell worm bins. I currently have a "Can-O-Worms." I recommend this or other stackable types of bins if you produce up to their rated capacity in food scraps. My household however makes a just a bit more than that, and the worms can't keep up all the time, especially when it is cold. Next, I am going for the Worm Wigwam, a heated flow through unit that costs a bit more, but handles alot more material.

There are a few less professional but still effective methods. You can build a wooden box that sits on the ground outside, or you can use a big plastic tub. There are many options, and if you keep a few key things right, the worms are very forgiving. I challenge you to take an hour or so and do a little research into vermiculture and vermicomposting.

We'll learn later that worms can be used to great effect in composting toilets, another "sweet" sustainable living option, but we'll leave those to the imagination for now.

So, after you have worm composted your food, paper, grass clippings, and whatever else, what do you do with the dark rich worm castings? Put them in your backyard garden or potted plants. Well explore that option next.

Remember, dirt is important, get some.
WiredForStereo