These are the posts that will ultimately hold the barrels. Mr.Herring and Spiro Millios set the posts on a rock base, mixed and added the concrete, and checked to make sure they were level. They set the posts Thursday after school and the plan is to let the concrete cure over the weekend. On Monday they will attach the barrels and we will finally add the kitchen scraps and being the composting process.
In the meantime in the Culinary Arts we have been saving LOTS of kitchen scraps for several months now. We have been keeping them in a 40 gallon trashcan, but finally filled that up a few weeks ago, so we split the scraps into two 40 gallon trashcans. When we went out as a class to inspect the compost it smelled awful and made people gag. It's would seem as though our compost has turned anaerobic due to lack of air, lack of movement or rotation, and having such a high moisture content. We added some leaves and some twigs to help dry it out, but obviously not enough. When we transfer some of the food scraps to the barrels the landscaping class will add some more dry material such as Peat moss and dried pine needles. Once in the barrels, the mixture should get proper air flow, reach the optimum temperature, and start to break down quickly. At least that is the plan! While turning the material we have in the trashcans I realized that we have some very large pieces of product in there and we need to be more careful in the future to break larger scraps down into smaller more manageable pieces.
So production on the metal composting barrels has been delayed for various reasons (this is not a built in part of anyone's curriculum so it's done with precious spare time) Our materials were delayed by several months due to some red tape issues, so we are just about to finish up the barrels and hopefully get them set up within the next week. Here are some pictures of the progress of the two barrels and the posts that will hold them. All of this work has done by two very talented and motivated young men in the Welding/Ag Metals program here at CTC, Mitchell Bishop and Jared Harshman. For starters they had to cut an access door in the barrels, it's tough to make precise cuts because the barrels are round. Then they had to weld on hinges and metal flaps to make the door close properly. They fabricated and welded a spinning crank on the end of each barrel so it will turn properly once mounted on the posts. The posts were fabricated and painted before putting them in the ground. The barrels were also primed and painted before the final structure is assembled.
