today I want to share with you all the bare bones to starting a compost pile we move to our off-grid property a little over a year ago and even though we weren't planning to have a really big garden our first year we just had a lot of other things to take care of we did want to start composting and amending our soil because when we're ready to garden we want to be good to go and building compost and soil is just something that takes time so we thought why not get started now instead of later. We did quite a bit of research online before getting started and honestly it's really easy to get overwhelmed. There is a scientific process behind composting and it's really easy to get lost in the details and the intricacies. So, I just wanted to create this video to show you just how easy it can be. Where to put your compost pile? We chose to find a happy medium and put our compost somewhere where it wasn't going to be in the way so is it in our main living and walking area but we also didn't want it too far from the house because we knew that if we're putting our kitchen scraps in the compost pile the further away the less likely it is we would compost. So, we tried to find that happy medium having it too close to the house you risk it smelling if it's getting out of balance too wet things like that; so that's why we chose to have it out of the way and also we didn't know how big we wanted to grow our pile so we put it in a space that allowed it to grow. One tip of advice if you have a bigger property and you have a little bit of flexibility on where to put it, you might want to put it a place where you can back a trailer up to the pile because we frequently are out and about when we pick up things for the compost pile and it works really well if we have a trailer of stuff to just dump it off right here like we did with this grass yesterday. What do you put your compost in? Well, Mother Nature doesn't use anything. Stuff just falls on the ground and it decomposes and it's okay. So, if all else fails you don't need anything, just make a heap on the ground and call it a day. We chose to use pallets because we already had them, we feel that this does keep it a little bit more contained and gives you a compost area and we also feel that it helped us build up rather than out so we've liked them they've worked really well for us. Another option is to buy a compost bin or tumbler, this might be a popular option for small scale composting or maybe if you're in more of an urban environment and you don't want some pile like this sitting out in your backyard or maybe you're afraid the neighbors are going to complain. Bins and tumblers can be a really good idea, I'll link to a few of them below this video. What do you put in the pile? Organic waste. Brown stuff and green stuff, carbon and nitrogen - however you want to word it. It's advised that you don't put in meat products, dairy and that you don't use waste from animals that are meat-eaters and there's probably a few other things. I'll go ahead and link to some do's and don'ts below the video. Nitrogen (or green stuff) is things like lawn clippings. It's advised that you try to get this type of stuff pesticide and herbicide free if you can because that's going to make its way into your compost and ultimately your garden. Also, things in this category are food waste - coffee grounds. Coffee is pretty much our main food group so we have that one covered. Manure, that's a really great source of nitrogen... Again, for manure you probably want to do a little bit of homework to see what that animal ate to make sure that's something that you don't mind being in your garden. This type of stuff also tends to be wet and retain a lot of moisture. If you get too much nitrogen in your pile there's a good chance that your pile will get kind of stinky or slimy and that's a sign that you need more carbon. Carbon is a lot of that drier stuff, this stuff may be a little easier to get it really depends on who you are and the season. An example of carbon are things like leaves; those are pretty easy to come by in fall. Sawdust, that's really easy for us to come by on our property. Cardboard, paper and even hay or straw. So, how do you get all this stuff? In a perfect world you would have all this stuff on your property and plenty of it. We have a few of these things over property but in all honesty, it's not enough to amount to anything. So, we started looking beyond our property for materials and resources. This morning I woke up and I thought, you know what I'm gonna get some carbon today... So I went to our local park and there's a lot of trees there - it's fall. All the leaves are on the ground, so I went with my rake and a few trash bags and I came back with a trailer full of gold. For making the pile; you add a little bit of green, you add a little bit of brown, a little bit of green, little brown, shake it all around and that's it. Let me tell you another secret, if it's not perfect that's okay. This wasn't perfect and I don't know about you but this looks like compost to me, usable compost. But now, let's talk about caring for your pile. While it can be complicated it doesn't have to be, and it isn't for us. We simply grow the pile to the best of our abilities and we try to water it every once in a while. Ideally you want to keep the pile moist. For us because we're off-grid, water isn't in abundance so we try to do what we can. We do try to churn the pile and mix things up when we remember; again, that's probably every two to four weeks. I don't know that this is absolutely critical but it can help speed things up. When will the compost be ready? I believe that really depends on the pile maintenance and also what you put into the pile, likely the time of year that you start the pile. We started this one in spring (early spring) and the pile was pretty large when we started and it's condensed down a lot. We didn't take super great care of this one but I'd say that looks like pretty good compost and that took probably about six months... And for the basics, that's about all there is to it guys. That's it. We're huge advocates of simply getting started. While we do try to do research and understand what we're getting ourselves into... Ultimately, we don't want to suffer from analysis paralysis. So, while there's probably a lot we could be doing differently in the end, this is working out pretty well for us and we do have usable compost that's ready to go in the garden. If you enjoyed this video and you want to learn more about the development of our off-grid homestead, we have a lot of projects in the works right now... We're working on building a timber frame barn, we're working on building a large garden, we're working on fine-tuning our solar power, things like that. Then feel free to follow our blog, its PureLivingforLife.com Also, if you like this video go ahead and give it a thumbs up and if you're on a Facebook and Instagram we're over there as well and we have links to all that in the description below this video and we'll see you next time!
