 to get started and we'll let folks come in as they come in. Thank you all for coming out. It's been pretty miserable outside today so I very much appreciate that you're here. My name is Cassandra Humman-Way. I am the outreach manager at the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District and the compost educator. In the back the person who signed you in is Dan Joyce. He is working with us. He's a CCB student and he's been doing amazing things helping us out and we have Orca Media here as well and also our Orca person is a Solid Waste District School Program Coordinator so we're all and then in the back here we have a former district person too, a former treasurer, board member, compost truck driver and a bunch of other things. So we're going to get started talking about compost and before I get too deep into it, let me just go to my first slide. I want to ask how many people here already compost or have already composted? One, two, three, four. Perfect five, six, yeah and I compost and there's a few people who have never composted. Great. I love it when there's a mix and just now I want to start by asking why for those who do compost why do you compost or why are you thinking about getting started and you can just call out your answers. The food scraps in the landfill generate methane. Peter and then yeah so less stuff in your trash. Yeah yeah and over here yeah I know that's why I always composted was for my garden and then also before Act 148 I just was like I'm not paying to throw away my food scraps. I'm not putting them in my trash because I can make compost out of them and save the money on the trash. Any other reasons why people are here? The wildlife like your compost? I'm so glad you brought that up. We are going to talk about animals and how to keep them away. Have you had bears in your compost? Oh okay can we hold that thought because I definitely want to talk about bears and other animals. Casual compost. I like that. Yeah oh well we're going to have to fix that. Use it. I also get the free tomatoes. I put it in I don't get my most of us composting in our backyard won't get it hot enough to kill weed seeds so if you've ever put a tomato or a squash in your compost it's going to come up like grass in your garden when you spread it out which can be kind of cool. So some other reasons that I put up here that might not necessarily be yours. About a fifth of all the materials that go to the landfill is food scraps and as I didn't get your name Frawn pointed out first thing that turns into methane in the landfill and we do know that the one operating landfill in Vermont up in Coventry is actually capturing methane for energy but they cannot capture all of it and they will not and they actually it's off-gassing and they're you know like flaming flaring it so it's in methane you'll see in this slide in a second it's a very powerful greenhouse gas. Also if you put your food scraps in the trash your trash is going to stink if you put it in your compost your if your compost is stinking you're not composting right and I'm going to teach you how to have your compost not stink but basically stink trash not stink compost that's a good reason right there. Garden and we talked about other folks' reasons I'm going to move on a little bit quickly because usually I take an hour and a half with this whole thing we're going to do it in an hour I just wanted to point out methane is 30 times more potent as a heat trapping gas than carbon dioxide and that's like I've actually seen the numbers that's a that came from science daily but the EPA I think says 24 percent I've seen it that the numbers changed depending on who's calculating it but it's basically a lot more powerful than carbon dioxide so it's a really good reason not to generate it if we can help it. I'm going to take a minute to talk about the Vermont universal recycling law because that's the law that bans food scraps from the landfill by next July so I'm not going to go deep into the history and I'm only going to focus on food scraps for this but just as a quick background it also bans recyclables from the landfill and that's already been in place and every business that generates food scraps is already getting their food scraps out of the trash either by working with farmers or having commercial compost facilities or haulers working with them or donating food since the law went into place food donations to the food bank tripled so we're keeping all that stuff out of the landfill and it's actually being used as a resource instead of trash and turning into methane so some people call it the compost law it is not a compost law the law is you can't put it in the trash composting is the most viable option for most of us but you can bring it to a drop off site that such as a transfer station most of the transfer stations actually all of them in the state now take food scraps they will charge a fee because it costs them money to to haul it but that's an option if you don't have a backyard system that you want to use or that if you don't have the space obviously backyard composting is a great way to deal with your food scraps sometimes working out a neighborhood sharing system is a great option that's not really infrastructure but i have neighbors who bring their food scraps to my compost and i know there's a couple sort of informal setups like that community composting is something that's being developed around the state right now that is a system whereby if you're involved in say a community garden or sometimes even like an apartment site or at north branch nature center we have one set up if you're a member of the nature center you can drop your food scraps off they're composted on site but all you have to do is drop off your food scraps and if you want to help and be part of the team doing that you can um and then the last thing i want to say about the law is that meat and bones are exempted from the food scrap ban so with the idea being nobody is expecting you to try to compost your meat and bones in your backyard that is something we discourage it can attract animals it's definitely possible but you have to be a very serious composer and really know what you're doing and be managing your pile regularly in order for that to work so oh for i skipped over curbside haulers thank you well that is something they the the haulers have been asking for exemptions from the law ever since they were supposed to get started so currently they've pushed it back to 2020 it's up to the legislature we have a legislator right behind you in the room um not to call you out or anything but um i'm not sure how it's going to sugar off i think it's likely they're the law for the law actually requires haulers to offer a curbside hauling but a lot of them are resisting because it means retooling because sella i think they're doing it in chitinon county um so their argument is that it's very expensive in the rural areas and it is um it may come down to and uh you know where concentrated populations may have it but the rural areas may not um right now we do have a curbside hauler in for in the mob pillar area her name is megan um she has a company called earth girl if you haven't heard of her google it um she will pick up from your home earth girl composting yeah she's a small one woman show but she hauls food scraps from people's homes um just like the way you get your trash or recycling home yes you sure you're not thinking of grow compost because i'm pretty sure grow compost picked up that yeah we have a there are commercial food scrap haulers um and the only one operating in in this area right now is grow compost and they have a truck that looks a lot like the castella truck so it's could be it's it looks like a big garbage truck but it only takes food scraps yeah yeah so and they're doing all the grocery stores and they do the co-op and um restaurants and all of that definitely chickens are a great option if you have animals that will eat your food scraps that's even better then you turn your food scraps into eggs and meat they don't eat them really you got to change what you eat what your chicken's like really maybe like when i had chickens they would i would give them the food scraps and there's always some leftover like they would eat they wouldn't eat the watermelon rind so then that i would break up and compost that so it might be it's not a it's not a it's not a full fix but a partial fix um so we're going to take go uh this is important because everything we're about to talk about is going to drive the reason why you're going to compost the what the techniques are composting that keep out smells and animals but real quick i just want to ask what do you think of when you think of compost call it out well eggshells eggshells animals getting into your stuff oh and so i told another person who has animal issues we are going to talk about animals so uh what else did i hear over did you say something coffee grounds i'm so glad you guys said that because what i want to point out this is maybe me being a little bit semantic compost is not food scraps it is the mixture that was made out of food scraps so it is this um it is the decayed organic matter used for fertilizing conditioning land let's not forget it's a value added product anybody who walked in the front door walked by rows and rows of bags of compost available for sale most of which was made with food scraps from the local schools and restaurants um and it's a there's a dictionary definition there converts residue material into an easy to handle hummus like product so um as an example this is from one of my co-workers compost bins you can smell it touch it feel it it doesn't smell like coffee grounds eggshells or stinky stuff um you will see some whole eggshells in there but that won't hurt your garden when you put it in so this is really important this part this is uh never forget that compost is not sterile it's alive it's there are billions or trillions of microorganisms in your compost pile and if you don't have them you won't have compost you'll just have an anaerobic mush um they are living beings they require the same kinds of things that all living beings require um so just like if you think of your microorganisms as your pets or as you know like your farm your farm animals they need food air and water just like other living beings so the food would be what food scraps or also um like the carbon based materials you would add like leaves or wood shavings um air is when you're turning your compost pile and every now and then in Vermont not as frequently in other places you may need to actually water your compost pile if it gets too dry so just keeping that's we're going to come back to that over and over again um this is i'm going to skip over this slide we're going to talk about this stuff oh i really wanted to talk about it um i'm going to we're going to talk about it part of the other piece of composting is particle size i mean if you really want to get picky you can chop your food scraps down to smaller pieces um greens and browns it's really important we're going to talk more about typically you would add three times as many browns as greens so a brown is a carbon based material i don't know if this can be passed around this is examples of browns any of these things you can mix in with your compost my favorite is wood shavings not wood chips wood shavings which you can if you don't know somebody who's a carpenter or builder you can actually buy a bale of them at guys for five dollars um but you can use anything that any not anything but anything that you see in that um demo there sorry that's a little cramp for passing that around um you're going to get mush you need the brown and that for some of you you've just learned everything you need to know and you can leave now i mean you basically need three times as many browns as greens and greens are your food scraps or like if you just mowed your lawn and you add all your green lawn clippings you need three times as many browns so i don't recommend putting in a huge pile of green lawn clippings necessarily um lots of leaves or wood shavings or you can use shredded paper or any of that stuff um it is if you like let it dry once it's dry it's a brown same with leaves oh yeah i meant browns is basically another way of saying carbons um it's it's a little bit you know greens and browns is just a simplified way of talking about like nitrogen rich and carbon materials if it's been composted it's already compost you can just use it in your garden yeah because that's like a pretty good mixture of greens and browns already because horses are usually horse bedding has is very dry often so that would be already mixed yeah and chicken like if you get into maneuvers it's really like depends on like chickens are usually very wet i would almost like compost that separately and then mix it later um so and this is uh i'm just because as a as adult learners we often need to be hammered over the head before we remember things so i'm going to hammer the three to one thing throughout um just if you don't remember anything else today remember three parts browns to one part greens that's up to you i mean they'll break down faster if they're shredded but it depends on if you have something that you can shred it with yes so uh basically i i'm trying to figure out so i can't figure out what that ratio is like what yeah so for chicken waste is like a different animal almost i would when i raise chickens i would throw their manure into a pile you could even do an open pile for chicken manure because you're not adding food scraps and just give it like you know a couple months turn it and then you know after about six months i should be ready to use in your garden i you don't if you're putting bedding in there and you have bedding and chicken manure just leave it yeah yeah it's going to be wet it's going to be really nitrogenous but it's going to need to sit and compost before you use it on your garden okay yeah no it's no you don't not for not for chicken bedding but you do need to compost it if it's very very wet you might want to add some browns but the part of the reasons why we emphasize so many browns with greens is because that is going to reduce smells in your compost and reducing smells is going to reduce animals so for chicken manure you don't really have the concern about animals the way someone composting food scraps does so it's a little bit different but you're fine if you just put it in a pile somewhere in your property let it be flip it in a couple months and then come back and grab it um so we did talk about this already so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on it but so browns are wood shavings leaves straw shredded paper just one note about shredded paper you can put shredded paper in your compost but don't only use shredded paper as a brown you need other things it just doesn't have enough body you're going to also need wood shavings or straw or something it isn't no years ago that changed they're almost all soy based inks now and the nitrogens are anything that's still green so your food scraps they're wet often if you're weeding your garden weeds are fine but i recommend leaving out your weeds that have gone to seed because those are those seeds are not going to die most of us are not hot composting so you just end up spreading weeds around um in case you didn't get the point three to one so this is just a visual of the point if you have one bucket of food scraps you dump it in your bin you should have some kind of like a covered bin next to your compost bin i use a trash barrel a rubber made trash barrel and if i have one bucket of food scraps i just kind of scrape in and visually get i actually do two to three times so it's not always exact exact but i eyeball about three times and i use i use a bucket or scoop so it measures um i don't mix it up right away i let it sit on top and then i'm i turn my pile about once every month i haven't actually turned it over the winter i haven't turned it yet but in the warm season i would turn it once a month you can turn it every week if you want but you don't necessarily have to sit i'm i'm not talking about hot composting which would be a different process but for just go ahead do we need sun it's not a hundred percent necessary to be in full sun for this kind of process it helps heat it up but it's not really ultimately what gets the job done um okay so this is the big the the big info that i want to share with you it's how do you figure out what kind of system you want and then uh i'm going to go through all the different composting systems actually take that back not all the different because there's hundreds of different composting system but you know the the most the ones you've probably heard of the first step before you put in a new system or before you're going to fix one that's not working right is to think about your goals and uh who you are like really be honest with yourself who you are what kind of space do you have what are your goals some people just want to keep their food scraps out of the trash they don't care if they have the actual compost so they might be better off with a different kind of system than somebody who wants it for their garden um or your goal might be like my goal is to have a system that my neighbors can share with so i want to build something really big so i can have like a neighborhood composting your time i work full time and i've got kids so i'm not going to put a lot of time into it i might not want anything that requires a huge amount of management and also your energy if you're sick or if you're taking care of other people so keep all that in mind before you decide what you're going to do so now i'm going to go through several different types of compost systems and i'm just going to tell you pros and cons and ask questions as i go um i'm starting with a premade bin this is a so this one is the brand is soil saver and it's the brand that we sell at the district and this isn't a sales pitch but we we have them available at wholesale rates so it's an it's an easy way to get started for where is what so we actually have an office down the street on berry street but um we have a grant so that anybody who attends a compost workshop can get one of these for $35 at the workshop that's only available at the workshop and then they're $50 if you stop by the office but these retail for about 90 um i didn't bring my demo i was telling dan i don't want to schlep it up the stairs about 30 inches by 30 there yeah they're like 28 across by 30 high so it's it's just it's not yeah but that's that's about the normal size for a compost bin you need something about that size yeah so the hardware cloth for this this is an open bottom and the reason is remember the microorganisms they're in all soil all the time one teaspoon of soil has something like two billion microorganisms in it so you want your compost to touch the soil however you don't want rodents coming in so the way to deal with a soil saver is you actually would prep the ground it's going to go in by digging down about two inches square all around and you lay a piece of hardware cloth does everybody know what hardware cloth is this is you can pick this up at any hardware store it's called hardware cloth it's not actually cloth i'm not going to pass it around because this is really sharp edged right here but it's a very stiff kind of like large screen almost um and this one has the holes are a quarter inch they make them half inch and full inch i recommend you get the quarter inch hardware cloth because nothing no rodent is going to get through this occasionally with the half inch a baby rodent could squeeze through but you'd probably yeah so go with a quarter inch and what and there it's also difficult to handle so you want to make sure you have like leather gloves on when you handle it um no you buy it in a roll already rolled you can ask them to they might be willing to if you let them know you need a certain size and you know yeah so that would be do you know which ones obisans there you go you could go to obisans and get the size you want yeah so yes so you you get a piece that's a few inches bigger around than the bottom of your bin and you literally just lay that on the ground and i would lay it with see how it wants to hold the roll shape i lay it with the that rolled in shape facing down because otherwise it's all going to like scooch up right away um so you just set the bin on top of that and if you had dug up around it you might put the soil back on top of the so what happens is an animal is going to try to dig in under to get into this and they're going to hit the hardware cloth and not be able to get in um so that's the way you can keep rodents out of these guys yeah and it's like your leader yeah there's two options one option is get a second one because that's how you can compost through the winter um the and then yeah and then the what you just said those bins are really great because if you take the lid off you can if you're strong enough they weigh 30 pounds it'll stay in the shape that's in it yeah this is how i switch out my composters lift it up put it down and then you have like a pile right here which is great because then you can turn it with your pitchfork and you've aerated it and you've gotten all the like new food scraps on the bottom and the old ones on the top so it's a really nice thing that is probably good to um do that anyway even if you weren't going to add the hardware cloth so yeah and then you would oh you mean with browns or recover it with what yeah no oh sorry i didn't say it clear i wasn't clear so once you pick up the bin and move it then you're like using some kind of a shovel or pitchfork to move all that material back into the bin um and typically you're going to find the bottom couple inches are probably already finished compost and but if you want to let it sit longer then you let it go turn it put it back in the bin and let it sit another period of time and then if you have two bins then you do that with all your i do that every november and then i have that sit over the winter and i have another bin that is i start my winter with empty and all the food scraps fill it up over the winter and usually it goes up and down enough that now i've been adding food scraps all winter and my bin is like about half full you keep adding browns all winter long same ratio and then um you stockpile them so i like in the fall i usually collect uh leaves often my neighbors are happy to give them to me i don't actually have many in my own yard i also do i spend the five dollars in buying a bale of wood shavings i put it in the covered rubber made trash container that i keep right next to my compost bin and i have a scoop in there and it just i always have a container of browns that sits right next to my compost bin so all winter long it's right there they stay dry and um but that way when everything dissolves and decomposes in the spring the browns are already mixed in the likely thing is if anyone hasn't done this yet this year and i haven't is it's still going to be really wet even if you've been adding browns so you're probably going to want to turn your pile in the spring and add more browns and let it because sometimes if it ever gets stinky it's going to be in the spring the first turning of the spring and then it's stinky for about half an hour because you've aerated it and then you cover it with browns and that goes away um i'm going to move on unless there's any other questions about soil savers i i just wanted to also say that they set up in about 20 to 30 minutes max they're really easy to set up that's another advantage to them this is another pre-made thing this is um not a compost bin it's called a green cone and now i'm kicking myself that i didn't bring my demo bins with me usually i have one of those with me this is only half of the thing the rest of it is buried underground and this is actually a picture right after these two were installed so you can see how it's all dug up around them these are for the person who either has a lot of meat and bone scraps and you don't want to put them in the trash because you can put meat and bones and fish and dairy and even pet waste in these because they're buried the only entry is this lid and it's a locking lid so typically animals aren't that interested in it although not sometimes they figure out they every now and then we have someone want a new lid because a squirrel's been lying at it but these are more like what we call a digester the material goes in it digests underground the it's a basket underground made out of really sturdy plastic and when the material decomposes it kind of like leeches into the ground around this so this all this soil around these is fertilized so it's really nice if you like put it in the middle of a garden but you don't have to some people just want to get the food scraps out of the trash and they don't you don't add browns you don't have to mix it you don't have to move it you just put them in and you don't have to deal with it and you never take stuff out nope never yep yes it's about you're going to have to dig a hole about three feet deep for that so that's the disadvantage it takes about one to two hours to install it but then you never deal with it again is it no I wish I brought my I'm so sorry but the bottom is more it looks like a laundry basket looks like a round laundry basket but it's like super sturdy and I will say the manufacturer says that you're supposed to dig those up and move them every three to five years but we've had people using those for 12 to 13 years who have never moved them and they keep work if it's not working anymore but we have our experiences at the people who are using these for a long term haven't had to do that I know of two people who have dug up and moved theirs one was an obsessive compulsive and the other ran it over with their car so yes yes so you could put all your food scraps in there and that's why this one has two because this family was going to put all their food scraps in it nope right so that's the advantage um well if one thing I want to put it they if they fill up they're not working so the idea is that you're just continually adding and they never fill you'll you'll see the full food scraps but they should always be processing the manufacturer says they process between two and three can you hold up let's see those buckets on the side two between two to three volume buckets about that size per day in the summer and about one in the winter but that is if it's sited perfectly so it has to be in full sun no it has to be well drained soil and if you don't have well drained soil there are ways you can install it like if you dig a bigger hole than the size of the basket and line it with gravel but even so it's gonna it in the spring the water table is high it's gonna like it's some of them stop working in the spring because everything's so wet it's just you know it needs to drain nope no you don't water them the this lid flips up and stuff goes in but you don't need to do the that's the beauty of this it's a pain in the neck in the beginning when you have to have the right site and you have to spend time putting it in but then you don't have to deal with it again this big I actually have them so I had I think some of you know that we do have we're selling soil savers for $35 and these for 90 we usually sell them for 125 today and we actually have them in the van which I'll tell you after we're done if anybody wants to do that so I could like bring one out to show you and we're parked over at the VSC parking lot right now but yeah it's fairly substantially sized but once it's installed the cone is only up to about here and they're fairly unobtrusive once you start noticing them you'll see they're actually in yards all over downtown Montpelier but you have to like know to look to them because they kind of blend in any other questions before we move on yes I think it's a combo I like I would recommend adding the gravel and the sand anyway even if you are pretty sure you have well-drained soil because it can't hurt and you're only going to install it once so you might as well do the extra when you're installing it and then you sort of built in a little bit of extra drainage for yourself yes right when you open it to add food scraps you'll smell something but once you close it there's no smell that that's why it's kind of neat when you start noticing them around downtown dogs don't go near them they don't notice them I have heard of some people having when they first install them and the soil's still a little loose that a skunk or raccoon might try to dig in that I've only heard of that once and what we recommend is good old hardware cloth you if you cut this into like 12 inch strips and you just line them around like in a square around the bin when you install it that stops that digging and then you really don't have animal issues so you're going to be digging a hole in the ground the basket goes underground and and where the basket and the lid screw together that goes about an inch under the soil as well yeah so you would just lay this on around it cover it up with sod or soil and yeah yeah you're not putting this inside it you're just putting it around it and yes the material disintegrates inside yes you lay it down around it I'm I wish I had better pictures for that I apologize yeah I'm going to keep moving because we're closing in on our time yes one more question definitely yeah the only case a friend of mine got one of these about five three or four years ago maybe five and put it right next to her lilac bush the lilac bush got so big it's like grown over and around it like you need to move it because now it's in shade those the only like if you put a bush around it eventually you're going to shade it and it really needs the sun to work but if you're doing like flowers or perennials that don't get much bigger than it totally yeah and they'll love it okay I'm going to talk about a couple other systems those were the pre-built um and I don't I feel like it sounds like I'm pushing that but I'm not I actually think there's plenty of things you can do without spending money or with minimal money but they just take more time this is an example of an open pile I'm putting it out there because I just want you to know if you anyone here compost is what oh we got a whole crowd I'm going to ask you to stop um yeah yeah and the thing that finally brought me around because I composted an open pile for 20 years but I lived way out in Woodbury and even though we had bears they never came to my property yes we had little rodents but it didn't matter because my nearest neighbor was so far away they didn't notice and actually the rodents brought owls so it's kind of cool but if you're downtown you don't want that and the but here's what sold me there is a fungus that will grow on your food as it's decomposing that's toxic and if a dog eats it the dog could die and that actually happened in Montpelier a couple years ago a dog named Mabel um got into somebody's open compost pile ate something that had that fungicide or fungus on it and and the dog died so we're I can't say we're all dog lovers I don't know all of you but we do kind of live in a culture where we don't want dogs to die um so I would just say if you're composting like this yes your food scraps will compost but it's there's a lot of other reasons why it's not a good idea and and it's mainly about animals um so I'm going to keep going just um so now that was sort of like the easiest way to compost open pile this is the most like Rolls Royce way three bin system anybody here been to north branch since we put in our three bin system north branch nature center so yeah we built one of those at north branch we built one at quarry hill apartments in berry town we're putting one in at aviary apartments in berry uh I think it's another part of berry and we have one at a condo site on um franklin street right near the middle school they take a lot of time effort energy and money it's about three hundred dollars worth of lumber if you buy your lumber new but if you're really like have a lot of food scraps or you're sharing with your neighbors this is kind of a neat system and you can also do these you can do a two bin you don't have to do three bins um this is also nice if you just do two bins um but this is designed so that this this person is saving their browns right here and they just have like a fence in a circle and they put their leaves in it um and yeah they're not water they're gonna get wet but it doesn't really matter because actually when you put your browns in your food scraps they get wet anyway so I'm sort of like who used the term was it you casual composter I'm a casual composter so I'm like I don't care if it's wet it's gonna get wet but if you care about that you'd want to cover everything then this is the first bin where you add your materials so you put your food scraps in your browns and you've got them stored right there and then when this gets about half full um you just these are actually um planks that slide up and down you pull the planks out you take a pitchwork you move all the food scraps into this bin you put your browns on top and then you let it sit while you fill this bin up and when this bin's filled up you do it again and you just keep moving things over and till by the time they're they've been in this bin for long enough you've got finished compost and if you still aren't happy with that you can pull the compost out and let it sit in a pile next to it and that's called curing which a lot of people recommend I actually have never done that myself I just put it right after it's finished I put it right on my garden but curing is just another way to like sort of let all the microorganisms finish what they're doing and before you put in your compost pile so that's the rules Royce um um tumblers who's using a tumbler yeah well so I'm thinking about it I would say don't do it tumblers are like the great you know deception they seem really cool and the one good thing I love about them is they're fully enclosed so if you're concerned as animals you could use a tumbler to start your food scraps because it's fully enclosed the animals aren't going to get in it but you need another part of your system it's like half a system because tumblers are small they're going to fill up and then what do you do when they fill up and they're not done composting I like that yeah and then you bring it to your pile I like that system a lot yeah yeah well that's the that's exactly what I was talking about if it's like one part of a system they they're great because then by the time it's in your pile they've already started decomposing so they're less attractive to animals too at that point these homemade ones you see a lot of these are very heavy it takes a very strong person to turn that when it's full so I would say stay away from that if you're going to go for a tumbler this is one that's the fancy fancy fanciest of all the tumblers I just got one for myself because I'm really like I nerd out on this stuff and I want to try everything but we use these at our community composting sites and the reason I like this is the only tumbler I like because it's got two chambers and it's insulated so you can fill up one chamber it heats up like really fast you have to add your browns to a tumbler just like you do a regular pile um but in in this insulated chamber it'll heat up to like 150 degrees so your hot composting in there when that's full you just close it lock it and you fill up the other side and when that's full yeah you could I still don't love doing meat you could do minimal amounts of meat because it's totally enclosed yeah um that is eyeball it so if it's like it's the watering is sort of like uh test it with your hand you put your hand in and squeeze it some people don't want to do that but um or um if you squeeze the material and it sticks together like a damp about the consistency of a damp sponge it doesn't need water it's just right if it crumbles apart and is a little dry you could add you like a bucket or like a gallon of water I wouldn't add too much to this because it's so enclosed it's not going to be draining the way a pile would be so I just have a quick question you said earlier that the big space saver kinds or whatever you call that needs this underneath and it needs to be on soil is it because this oh yes actually it does and I'm really glad I forgot to say that part um yeah microorganisms remember them um if you have a tumbler that's not working and in this I would start it out with a shovel full of soil so you're essentially inoculating it with any fully enclosed system that's not touching the earth just any shovel full of soil it could be from your lawn it doesn't have to be special other than that yes well that's for people who care if you don't care you don't have to yeah they're aerating it yeah there's plenty of people who really don't care I mean yeah and I would say if you live in a downtown area it would prevent rats and I highly recommend that because if you get rats it's going to infest your neighbors yards and but if you know that's why yeah so I mean maybe you don't need to do that but if you think you might if you think there are rats in your neighborhood just out of courtesy to your neighbors I would recommend doing that yeah there are people who really don't mind the little animals and it's just about if you're in a you know your neighborhood versus out in the country and what your tolerance is this I just want to introduce you does anybody has anybody heard of trench composting this is really for gardeners I've done it one year I did it and I loved it because what you're doing this is a terrible photo sorry but you dig a trench before you get started about 18 inches deep and then you add your food scraps as you go and every time you add typically you wouldn't have like that volume this has the whole trench filled up typically you'd feel like you're one bucket of food scraps you cover it with soil and then and then you add your next bucket a day or two later add the soil until the trenches pull and the neat thing about that is you don't add browns you don't have to mix it it just goes in the soil you cover it you can plant right on top of it when I did it I did not have any animals that were interested in it and I had a family of skunks living in my shed at the time so it works it's a great solution for meat and fish and bones and also in bear season I promised was it you I promised you we'd talk about bears you want to also bear season is right now when they're starting to come out of hibernation and they're really hungry you want to keep sweet smelling fruit out of your compost at this time because that interests them like cantaloupe rinds strawberry holes so you can put those in a trench composting system and it's covered with enough soil they don't smell it you could throw some seeds right on top of it too and by the time you get it just weirdly just disappears into the soil it's kind of a neat system but it's really for gardeners if you're not gardening it's not something no you don't add browns to that system just the soil yeah well because it's in a garden yeah yeah I suppose you could do it along anywhere I know I didn't think of that I in my mind it was in a garden but yeah you could dig a trench anywhere I just think the the value of it is that you have the fertility in your garden and you can take advantage of it pretty quickly okay so I'm going to move on some of this stuff is going to be like compost 101 like really beginner level but just want to reiterate it for all of us collecting food scraps you basically get some kind of a system anyone who wants one can have one of those pails right before you leave that's a that is a fairly inexpensive way to just have a bucket on your counter those we sell those for three dollars so that's like the cheapest you can do unless you're using like a used yogurt container but they so and you just put any your all your food scraps except meat and bones and fish in there including tea bags and coffee grounds and the coffee filters including eggshells citrus I will say one thing about citrus does anybody know yeah citrus comes pre-loaded with fruit flies just so you know yeah fruit flies so basically it's gross to think about but most citrus has fruit fly maggots in the peels yeah it's pretty gross but it we've all been eating citrus for years and never cared or noticed but if you're worried about fruit flies and you eat citrus you might want to get the citrus peels out in your compost quickly because they could hatch if they're on your counter that's just a little tip no it's not like nobody's injecting them with maggots well first of all fruit flies are tiny so it means like a little fruit fly laid an egg in the thing and you know it's kind of good because everything's alive and that's alive and it means it's not so poisoned that that happened but on the other hand if you don't want fruit flies in your kitchen you don't want citrus peels in there too long that's all two questions yes uh go ahead and then ah I like that that's a good tip you could do that in the freezer too if you had space yeah yep yep that's a great tip yes yes I'm glad you mentioned that right up does everybody know where Vermont compost company is right up main if you keep going up main street another mile and a half or so they're on the left hand side and you can bring your food scraps there for free um I you had a question yeah no that's not going to really change it and if you've never noticed it before you probably won't notice it now but anybody who's worried about fruit flies that's the main reason you would get them and it just means if you're saving your food scraps put them out in your bin every day or every other day you know just make it part of your routine and then it won't be an issue wait there was a question over here yes yeah that's great yeah cutting them up small really helps yes well you had a person over here and then yeah I mean personally I would but I also like I'm trying not to totally encourage composting meat scraps but I think if you had a little bit and it was in a tumbler and it wasn't closed you might you might notice more of a smell if there's meat in there and you would want to add a little extra browns if you were doing that but if you're in any kind of an open bin even the soil saver that has a lid I would keep the meat scraps out we had a person over here because we eat a lot of oranges yeah the citrus gets the soil a little bit off balance well I guess if you eat that many I mean I wouldn't I think anything if you have large quantity it could and if you're worried about it you I don't think it's going to be a quantity that you have to be but if you are worried you can test your soil UVM extension has a fairly like I think it's 10 or 15 dollars to test your soil and they might have recommendations for you but you were going to make in the soil saver just in case no I wouldn't do that you may I would test your soil rather than put it in the compost bin one more question I'm going to move on to the next slide flowers from a florist oh yes thank you for bringing that up they're treated with fungicide so flowers from a florist some of them have herbicides too so a fungicide is going to slow down remember the microorganisms there's also fungi and other organisms that are making your compost decompose and become compost now it's not going to you know if you already did it it probably is such a small amount it's going to slow it down it's not going to stop it but in general I would put those either in a separate space or you know somewhere out of the compost pile just because why add a fungicide when you need the fungi to yeah I mean it's like and if you get tulips here you don't have to worry about it because they don't have that or like flowers that you pick in the in a meadow but you just don't want the stuff that's been treated and that's pretty much mainstream florists do that yeah I don't recommend that because okay for example this super eco-friendly vest from Patagonia is made out of recycled bottles that means all of the lint from it is a microplastic if you add that to your compost you're adding microplastics to your soil so it's unfortunate but a lot of our clothing is not made out of natural materials and it's not a good thing for that to get mixed in with the soil yes yeah there's two things I want to say about compostable bags one is you don't need them but if you some people really feel more comfortable with a liner if you want one I don't know where they sell them locally but you make sure you look for something that's called BPI certified BPI stands for biodegradable product institute I believe don't get anything if it doesn't say BPI certified because it's basically greenwashed if you get a compostable bag that is BPI certified it will break down in your backyard compost yeah definitely that was the second thing I wanted to say is paper bags work wonders for that or some people will even fold up newspaper and put it on the bottom if you a lot of compost bins can go through a dishwasher too if you want to make sure it's cleaned out pretty good I like to fill it up with water swirl it around and put that right on my garden but you know like the the leavings on the bin but yeah for a liner I I like paper bags and newspaper as an option because then you could use a paper towel as long as it's not the stretchy kind if it's stretchy it has plastic in it but if it's just only paper that can go right in the compost bin with everything else yes if it stretches it does yes just oh yeah yep that's a really good trick yeah you can add wax paper to your compost yeah I would rip it up a little bit first yeah I've heard that yeah yeah yep yeah um we're getting close to when we're supposed to end and I'm not done so I'm going to flip through a few more I don't need to focus on that too much the point of this slide is just you can use anything to hold your food scraps you can also use a stainless one of those you know kind of fancier with filtered ones those are also nice but if you can't afford it or you don't want to do that there's you can use that even shows like I use rotisserie chicken there's what we can do with the black plastic thing um so it's I had a sheet rock bucket that I used for about 12 years before it finally cracked too much to use so it's really up to you I'm not going to spend a lot of time this is our list from when we mostly from when we worked with like grocery stores and restaurants in your own backyard compost you're going to be aware of the things you don't want in there the silverware came from because at schools there was always silverware in it um what anything that's not formally a plant yeah so um I thought that's what we were putting in this is what stays out anything that has never been a plant can't go in so if it's um paper that used to be a tree you can put it in if it's uh plastic in your paper towel yeah yeah um so uh again did you what's the ratio three one yay three parts browns one part green and that's because you love your neighbors so that's going to keep your smells down which is going to keep the animals away um and we already talked about what those are so I'm going to keep going um and this I don't mean to deemphasize because I only have one slide on this but it's the turning it is really important what do your microorganisms need air what else water and and food but sun helps um so yes so turning them this shows a pitch fork that's what I use these are a couple of other options if you want to buy a special tool for turning your compost this one you kind of like twirl down in and then it pulls up like a core sample almost um and this one is kind of neat because you push it down and these two things slide up you know when it gets down there and you pull it up it kind of spreads out and it'll pull up here we can pass if I don't know if it's enough space I got both of these on amazon but there's a lot of gardener supply stores I you I have looked and looked the regular hardware stores around here don't carry anything like this yeah I've looked everywhere and if you find one that does let me know because I will send business their way I'm going to leave these here and you can come look at them later yes you don't need it nope you don't need it if you feel like your compost is failing add browns turn it and then if you're really worried add a little shovel full of soil but the anything that you buy that costs money that someone tells you is compost booster is just a fraud you don't need that stuff so I would do that and don't forget your browns too right is this a tumbler that wasn't working yeah add your browns add a shovel full of dirt give it a turn oh let's talk about bears let's talk about bears um ah perfect timing first of all who anyone have a bird cedar up still perfect good okay I think we all know by now that's what's bringing the bears in it's not your compost it's your bird feeders and if it's not your bird feeder it's your neighbor's bird feeder so you might want to have a friendly slightly uncomfortable conversation with your neighbor if they're bringing bears in with bird feeders um but yes yeah yep yeah yeah well so what'll happen is they'll come in because they smell the bird food which they can smell from one to two miles away miles um but the compost isn't going to they're not going to smell that from one to two miles away but once they come close they'll smell it and it's food so they'll check it out so that's why you saw her there um so if the bear's coming anyway if you see the mother bear grab a pot and pan and bang it and yell because it's have you ever heard the expression of fed bear is a dead bear yeah so I I love bears and I would like I would love to see a bear but I don't really want to see one because I know as soon as I see one they're in danger someone's going to shoot it or fish and wildlife is going to have to do something so I would make a lot of noise if you do see a bear don't go out running out to the bear but yell at it from your house bang a pot and pan um the other trick of course meat keeping the meat out the ammonia trick this is one I learned from Forrest Hammond who's the state bear biologist um he said if a bear like you might want to do this since you saw one and also you um soak a rag in ammonia and put it in a five gallon bucket right near your compost bin that remember what I just said they can smell bird seed from a mile or two away well if they can smell bird seed they can smell ammonia and they're not going to like it so that's going to keep them out they're going to smell that smell they're going to not like it and they'll stay away the other thing fish and wildlife recommends that I think is kind of a big deal for a compost bin but it is another thing you could do is to put an electric fence around especially chickens they're now recommending electric fences for chickens that's up to you I would rather start with the ammonia trick yes yes it is recommended for beehives electric fence the ammonia oh the ammonia or I don't know that's a good I would ask someone who knows more about bees I don't know that I'll ask but you I would if you have bees I would invest in electric fence around the bees yeah um also for your compost other besides like lining if you're going to make a bin or buy the premade bin this is your best friend this is what keeps the smaller mammals out this isn't going to stop a bear but it's going to keep out the rodents and the skunks and the raccoons and the rats but you have to really line your bin so if you're making a bin every side needs to be lined with hardware cloth also you there's a website called predator pee dot com you can buy coyote urine or other like if you really are worried about your predator animals also you can pee yourself around or on your compost pile and you can put hot pepper like large quantities of hot pepper like get it uh you know like a quart size container at the bulk bin and um if you know this worked for me when I had a skunk getting in I sprinkled it around and then put it on top and I did that a couple days in a row it it'll last until the rain washes it away but it's a good way to sort of keep them away and you have to reapply regularly yeah we'll try it try it so I would like to ask a few more questions just acknowledging that we're over a little bit I'm going to have a few wrap up things one is that Dan has us we asked you to fill out a little survey before you got here we have one that we'd like you to fill out after it's part of our process to make sure if we can improve the workshop and there they should only take a minute everybody gets one of those buckets if you want to collect food scraps if you don't get a bucket at least take the compost guide in there it goes through a few other types of system and if anybody wants one of the thirty five dollar soil savers or the ninety dollar green cones I'm going to set up here and what I'll do is I'll get take your order and give you your receipt and then I have everything out in the van out in the parking lot so if you you'll have to wait until I'm done taking orders and now we can go meet out I'm over way over in the vsc in the big white van and either Dan or I will go out there and we'll get you your soil saver or green cone right now so any questions before we start that process all right thank you guys so much for coming out today