Monday, September 30, 2013

Back to school = back to composting

We are finally back up and running (prepping food = kitchen waste) and making a new batch of compost. The batch from last year dried out over the summer so we emptied the barrel and added it to a dirt pile out back. In the following pictures Mr. Hering is checking out the barrels to assure they are working properly and to see if any adjustments can be made. We talked about adding some more vent holes to allow for proper aeration. We also looked at and discussed a few ways to make the screens for filtering the compost. Any large chunks will go back in to continue breaking down. 
As you can see we are finally reaching high enough temperatures for the thermophiles to be doing their job breaking down the food scraps. The mixtures seems to be pretty wet this time around because we have a lot of food scraps, but not enough dry material. We added some of our lint from the dryers, some saw dust from the carpentry class, some shredded paper from our building, and we are going to collect some fallen leaves this week. After we add some dry material this week, we will lock it up and turn it occasionally, but we basically need to let it work it's magic now!!





More photos and updates to come once we have finished product.

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