the straw fort: one my sustainability symbols

The Queen of Green — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:47:05 +0000

Last warm June, at the Rural Heritage Institute in Vermont, in between draft horse and scything workshops and food, agriculture and sustainability presentations at Sterling College, I tucked into the section on composting in Elliot Coleman’s new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses and was mesmerized by a design of his for a compost bin made of straw bales. I began to dream of ways I could have this. Scroll up to October where, at my kid’s school, Autumn decorations – pumpkins, scarecrows and HAY BALES ! clustered around the campus. I spoke with the head groundskeeper who promised them when their life as decorations were over; the only other interested party was a family who asked for them for their church nativity scene. My husband and son drove home with 13 bales (lucky 13!) in the back of the van. In short order, they were stacked and secured; stakes woven through the baling wire and pounded in to the soil.

With a hollow interior, this ’straw fort’ was ready to roll as a self-composting compost bin. Only here, it would be adapted for Brooklyn life.

Compost!

The Queen of Green — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:01:57 +0000

Annie holding a compost worm

Amending soil around the fig tree

Hand sifting and sun-drying the current batch of compost from 'The Elmhurst Gas Tank' bin

Two country compost bins; the 'Elmhurst Gas Tank' (left) and the other made from a Brooklyn neighbor's discarded flexible fencing (right).

Some remaining invasive bamboo, about 12' tall. I chopped it out to make way for the garden. My body was not a happy camper afterwards.

The Food Voice » compost

the straw fort: one my sustainability symbols

Compost!