Riding home from work reminds me its bin night. Always green bin. Then either red - rubbish or yellow - recycling. Tonight it's recycling. I park my bike, unload my man bag from my panniers and my lunch container then wheel the yellow bin out.
Nothing goes in the green bin most weeks. We have learnt to value the scraps and the organic matter, the grass clippings and the branches. Why send that energy, that carbon and nitrogen and the minerals in the produce off your land?
Manu Re rides past waving frantically for my attention. He's excitable at the best of times. More so now. He shares my passion for food and gardening.
Silently pulling up to the curb on his electric cargo bike, he greets me with his french farmyard "Bonjour comrade".
"Come see what I found today" Lifting the lid on square 10 litre ice cream containers reveals cow poo and straw. Wet and musty. Wafting up with the bright smells of the dairy floor or the cattle truck. He knows the value of it.
"Where did you get it from?" I ask.
He shrugs and looks away. Fair call, I wouldn't give away the location where I dug up some gold, so why would he. I congratulate him on his find, talk a little more about his kale that has just gone in and the need to turn his piles - compost that is.
I ask him how he got hook on composting. "Oh comrade, do you really want to know?"
"Yes" I say, not sure of what is to come.
"It was my dream to one day sit on a throne in my own backyard" He says.
Shocked, I clarify - "A composting toilet?"
"Seeing waste human manure go down the drain caused me grief. Seeing farmers spread fertilizer on their farms didn't make sense when chook poo and cow dung were readily accessible. Fermenting intrigued me. I pickle and preserve, make sourdough and sauerkraut. Food is a passion for me and gardening a workout. So why not close the
loop. Create the cycle. Did I mention cycling is a passion too?"
"My journey to start a backyard composting toilet also came from people I meet on farms who were
composting and recycling their poo - shit, Faeces,
human waste whatever you want to call it. I wanted to know more but
people wouldn’t talk about the details. And I’m a details person."
"But where did you find the details Manu?"
"I got snippets of information here and there. Which books to read, people who were practicing humanure composters.
I saw their systems, smelt the piles and even felt their fine hummus
after a year of composting. And yes, I ate food grown from composted
poo."
Lucky I am leaning against the recycling bin to stop me falling over.
Manu continues. "I’d
created normal composts in my garden and watched them slowly turn into
friable additions for our garden. But it was slow. I knew something
was wrong but couldn’t pin it down. Then I learnt about hot composts. I learnt that over 45 degress for one hour will kill pathogens. So I built hot composts and watched them turn my scraps of carbon and nitrogen and water into usable organic matter in eight weeks."
"I monitored the temperatures and learnt the ratios and times to turn the pile to get an even compost. How to add organic matter to the center of the pile and use a cover material"
"I learnt about weed teas and banana teas, how to use chook manure and
how to compost coffee grinds so that they add to your soil and not kill
the seeds and seedlings."
"But poo! How does that really work?" I ask.
"Well I read a 12 page ebook that gave the basics. But you know me - details! I needed the confidence to give it a go on a suburban block. So I bit the bullet and ordered The Humanure Handbook."
"You should read if you give a crap." he says laughing and effortlessly gliding away.
Later that night I walk to the back fence where the compost bins are cooking. Thinking of Manu, I plunge the compost thermometer in one. Put the scrap bucket down, open up another compost bin and clear away the cover material, dig a little hole in the heap. I take a sniff. That's the best way to tell how your pile is going he said, if it's too wet and stinks - it's anaerobic. If its dry the microbes cannot move so your pile will not heat up, too wet and they'll slow down. The scraps go in. The heap is warm and moist. It's progressing well for a small young pile. I sprinkle a little leaf mold over the scraps, wet it down and cover. Raking the cover material back.
It still amazes me how the cover material can stop any smells from coming of the pile, can stop insects and rodents finding the food. On a micro scale, the moist carbon acts like a rain forest, cleaning the planets air.
Thinking of the rain forest loss around the world gets me down and I head over to the chook run to check the girls are heading into the coop for the night. They hear me come over and race to the door thinking I had food for them. No, its gone in the compost tonight. They don't know its not good to leave scraps out at night attracting mice and all their friends.
Picking up the eggs from the day I thank them for their contribution and we all head into our houses for the night.
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