Country Mouse Monday: hurrah, the fallow time!

As much as I love the spring and the young garden, and the summer and its explosion of edibles and flowers and colors, and the fall and heat and tomatoes finally,

oh dear, oh dear, how I love the turning to winter and putting the garden, after months of busy productivity, to a well-deserved sleep.

A point comes every summer -- no matter how many times, every year, I promise myself that I'll work hard to ensure that it doesn't -- when the garden, well-planted, well-composted, well-watered, outdoes me completely, pumps out more than I can keep up with, becomes a riotous happy tangle of vegetation, doing everything I hoped for. 

And always so much more!

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Such hot shit!

Thanks to Peggy and Jim at whose house we helped build a gorgeous salvaged-redwood three-bin compost system last Saturday, we are the lucky recipients of a big ole bag of shit from Peggy's sister's chickens. Joe added some in to our compost pile earlier this week, and now that baby is too hot, too hot to handle.  Literally.  It's 78 degrees out on this lovely Friday afternoon, and that pile is steaming as Joe's turning it.

Oh, what a difference some poop makes!

While our compost has been cooking all summer long, it's been relatively cool to the touch, packed with worms, but slow.  With this new addition, I am reminded to write about a project undertaken a little while ago: the Sunchips bag.

Way back on June 6th, we added an empty so-I'm-told-biodegradable Sunchips bag to the compost and started the clock.  The back of that super-crinkly packaging said it would break down to nothing in 13 weeks in a hot home compost pile.  Oh, really?  Since the 100%-compostable cornstarch spoon we got at The Scoop in Fairfax remains intact after at least four years in the compost, I was hopeful that this new claim would maybe be true.  The more truly compostable alternatives to plastic and non-biodegradable packaging the better.

So after 12 weeks, what is the result?

The Sunchips bag is in smaller pieces, largely thanks to being repeatedly pierced by the pitchfork as the pile's been turned at least 10 times since we started this little experiment.  Granted our compost hasn't been burning-hot, but still, I'm not so impressed.  

We'll keep turning and watching.  Maybe the chicken shit will prove stronger than the bullshit, and this biodegradable bag will prove to be more than just Earth Day eco-marketing.   That would really, really be great.  Fingers crossed, pitchfork at the ready.

Sunchips bag: Week 1, and an unexpected trip to Wildcare

So the supposedly 100% compostable Sunchips bag has been in the compost for a week.  I turned the compost today, which became more elaborate than I intended, since I ended up screening some finished compost to make space, and combined two half piles into one big pile.

The verdict after one week:

No change.  

It's dirty, for sure, and created kind of a gross anerobic patch right above itself since it's still an impermeable layer.  If you look closely, there are two holes in it, but that's just where I caught it with the pitchfork as I was turning the pile.

The chip bag itself is incredibly noisy, super-scrunchly, which made it easier to locate.

Since for some reason, I really, really want the bag to break down completely as depicted on the package, I made a big production of placing it in the center of what is now a perfect compost pile, nicely-layered.  Ready to cook.

Like this:

Interestingly there were a lot of pine needles and big dry patches in the compost toward the bottom, probably from when Joe was up on the roof a few weeks ago to clean the skylights and cleared the gutters.  And as I was pitching forks-ful of that stuff over into the new pile, lo and behold, I found a tiny little adorable baby vole:

 We are not fans of voles generally, since they're pretty destructive.  But this one was just a baby, so I tucked him into a little spare cage (kept for just this eventuality!) and drove him down to WildCare. Where he became Patient #0733.  When I left, those good people at WildCare were re-hydrating him.  Nice!

While there, picked up the super-cool Laws Pocket Guide, and now know that this gorgeous visitor to our flowers this morning is an Anise Swallowtail.  Oh, what an amazing, beautiful, diverse and exciting place we live in!

Cycle 6, Day 5: The Cure for What Ails Him

It's a gray day and Joe's been feeling pretty crappy. We went for a leisurely amble with Jasper this morning on the levies near McInnis Golf Course. So glad we had down jackets on and gloves -- brrrr! After a few hours of napping and feeling generally miserable, Joe is now back on his feet and outside, doing something he loves: screening finished compost.

This is always a gratifying experience, checking out the worms, smelling the freshness of the dirt, appreciating that all that glorious soil amendment is the product of a natural process of decomposition for which we simply manage the conditions. Right now, it's even nicer for Joe, a great way to balance out the residual effects of super-toxic chemo and settle the mood swings of the prednisone.

There's real solace in the compost, too, actually. It's pretty hard not to be optimistic, not to be excited about the future, not to feel hopeful, when you're elbows-deep in fragrant new soil, dreaming of next spring and summer, what will we grow, what will we eat. Even in the darkest and coldest part of winter, the compost reminds us of what is coming, letting us feed the ground now so that it may feed us later. A little hit of summer sweetness even on this gray day.

This is delightful every year, but especially heartening right now, such an essential part of Joe's own springtime return. :)

5 Weekly Gallons of the Good Stuff

A cool little combination cafe-bike store opened up in our neighborhood recently (http://www.chinacampbikesandbeans.com/).* The owner is a local guy who also coaches the Terra Linda High mountain bike team. We went over there initially a few months ago just to check it out and were blown away by how cool the spot is. It's a funny little corner between the 7-11 and the laundromat that used to house a video rental store (VHS and Beta, way before DVDs), then a mail-order spice business. Bikes and Beans is our favorite use of the space by far.

The day we first checked the place out I asked if I could have the coffee grounds. So now we pick up a 5-gallon bucket a week of used espresso and drip. It's become a new ritual of our Sunday afternoons, and has had the very beneficial effect of driving us to yard-work for a couple of hours.

Here's how it works. I get home from yoga, Joe from his ride; we grab the dog, the clean bucket and our coffee cups and stroll to the corner. Justin brews us up some delicious coffee (from De La Paz Coffee in San Francisco, www. delapazcoffee.com, yum!) and we swap out the full bucket for the empty one, then make our way home. I sit on the stoop, drink coffee and get the used coffee ready for prime-time: with both hands, crushing the espresso pods, dumping out and shredding the paper filters. Meanwhile Joe's mowing the lawn or weeding or trimming. We flip the existing pile and layer in the coffee and new stuff, and generally marvel at the worms at the top of the pile, the heat at the center, and how much things have broken down since the last weekend. The apricots, for example, that we put in two weeks ago, are 100% gone. Love that!

There's so much about this activity that I love. There's the connection to the cafe, the elimination of the coffee from the waste stream and returning it to earth. There's the walking there with our coffee cups, and balancing everything + Jasper on our way back, and the meditative process of prepping the coffee for the pile. There's the amazing fragrance and heat of the pile as we turn it, the stages of decomposition we witness and the surprises like the baby praying mantis we pulled out of there today or the little alligator lizard hunting worms that we saw. It's such a simple little thing and so deeply, deeply satisfying.

And in a few months, we'll have gorgeous very coffee-looking soil to add back to our garden beds and feed the next season's crop of lettuce and flowers. When I asked for the coffee grounds, I only imagined it would be a great addition to our compost. What I ended up getting is a regular serving of peaceful simple pleasure every Sunday, a coffee high that I coast on for days.