Today Is A Great Day to Start A Compost Pile

My compost pile and guardian rooster. It’s a little bit fancy and based on a design that my grandfather, JI Rodale, created. But basically, I just throw stuff on the pile and let nature do its work.

Recently, I attended a Lehigh County Planning Session, and someone from Allentown started talking about the desire to do composting, but they were afraid of rats, mice, and other wild animals. And it occurred to me how much fear is at the root of our current environmental (and other) predicaments. Fear of “varmints” and creepy crawlers fuels a desire to eradicide* the things we don’t understand. As a result, everyone starves, including nature. And yet, almost everyone enjoys birds and flowers and butterflies and eating food.

I started listing all the things that eat mice and rats: foxes, raccoons, coyotes, opossums, and cats. Another man at my table, who works for the PA Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCNR) and was wearing an awesome official outfit, by the way, added in owls, snakes, and hawks. In fact, a barn owl can eat up to 3 mice per night! Starting a compost pile, or maintaining the one you already have, is a wonderful way to restore the natural habitat of your area, radically reduce your household waste, and feed the earth the food it truly loves and needs to be healthy and happy.

Getting started is so simple that it seems wrong. Make a pile. That’s it. You don’t need to turn it, water it, fuss over it, or even use it!!! I’ve had a pile I’ve been adding to in massive quantities (food waste, yard waste, chicken waste when I had chickens, and random other non-toxic stuff) for 20 years. It’s roughly the same size as when I started because what the soil underneath and the microbes do is literally digest the waste and turn it into rich, fertile soil (aka compost). You can add it to your garden beds or not. You certainly never ever need to buy or use artificial fertilizers ever again! Find a back corner of your yard and start today. And don’t worry about the varmints, it’s their job to take care of our waste and feed the wildlife.

According to the Farming Systems Trial at the Rodale Institute, which has been going on for over 40 years, farming with compost — especially with animal manure, outperforms chemical agriculture consistently while improving the environment, healing the earth, and putting our waste back where it belongs, on the land. If you don’t have cows or horses to add their poop to your pile, all your wild animal friends will do their part to help while digging around in your pile for scraps. Don’t worry about diseases. Composting heats up as it decomposes things, neutralizing the viruses and diseases that cause human harm. When nature is in balance, everything is healthy. But always, always wash your hands. With soap! And wash your fruits and vegetables before eating them.

Now, many of you might live in tight quarters or suburban areas where composting is frowned upon by the HOA police. In that case, there are composting bins you can buy or make that keep things a bit more contained and tidier. Or, if you don’t have any outdoor space, you can try worm composting. I have a friend** who does it and even brought me a jar of her worm compost when we had lunch at the Country Club I belong to (yes, I really do belong, and that’s a fun story for another day). Each of my houseplants got a delicious spoonful, and they were quite happy about it.

I have not used bins in a very long time, but this past winter was so icy that I brought out an old compost tumbler (on wheels!) and put it right outside my kitchen so that I didn’t have to walk up to the pile every few days. All my food waste (including meat scraps) easily fit into the bin. Because it was cold, there was no smell to it. Admittedly, when my son-in-law and I took it up to the pile yesterday to dump it out, it smelled pretty awful. But I was actually surprised in a scientific way how much everything had decomposed, even though I hadn’t added anything into it to help it along. Plus, it was steaming! A good sign that decomposition was happening. The smell will dissipate quickly. And honestly, my regular compost pile rarely smells. And if it does, covering it up with some leaves or plant waste contains the odor quite nicely.

Because I compost everything (including unbleached paper napkins and paper towels, beeswax candle stubs, and leftovers) and I recycle almost everything, my actual trash is considerably lighter and less. Sadly, it consists mostly of the plastic wrappers that too many things come in. I am skeptical of plastic recycling and divert many things to the trash where they can be contained in perpetuity. Of course, I try to avoid plastic wrappers as much as possible. But it’s still not possible.

Okay, now that we have gotten the specifics out of the way, I want you to think of composting as one of many radical acts that we can do to help heal nature and take power into our own hands. When you start to understand how nature works and work with it rather than against it, suddenly the options are limitless. When you start to realize that those “varmints” are truly your friends, allies, and protectors, you begin to understand that nothing, nothing, can destroy us if we work together. And there is nothing from nature to fear…except perhaps humans. But that, too, is a story for another day.

*Eradicide is the combination of eradicate and “cide” which means to kill. I made it up but I like it because it’s all-inclusive.

** Hi Krista!