 teach you guys a little bit about what that is, how we use it, and what we do with it. So first of all you have to understand everything that you see, you touch, you smell, you taste. It has come from the earth in some way. So that's everything. Let's say that's plastics, that's going to be your glasses, that's going to be of course your food. These four things, one of the things to remember is some of these are non-biodegradable and some of them are biodegradable. So what biodegradable means is the fact that it can be broken back down into those smaller building blocks and be put back into the earth and basically be recycled. This is a form of recycling for the earth that we can do. So what happens is when we take these things that are biodegradable and can be broken down and you're sending them to the landfill, you're basically robbing these nutrients that you can recycle, you can reuse, and you can put back into your food chain. So let's talk a little bit more about moving those nutrients up the food chain and recycling them. So what does that mean? Well we're going to start with the basics, that's going to be your grass. So when you start with grass, then you're going to have something that's going to eat the grass and that's going to be your cows, your animals and things like that. And then what happens is who gets to eat the cow, me and you. So what we're doing is we're taking nutrients that we put into our grass by feeding it with those good composting materials and we're moving it up into the food chain and we're making a better type of food source for us in the long run. Now so let's change this up a little bit. So you say well what also likes to eat grass and compost, those are your worms. What likes to eat your worms? Your chickens. And then we'll either eat the eggs or we're going to eat those chickens themselves. So when we put better food into this building blocks of our food chain, we eventually get better nutrients up the chain. So here I can see while I kind of teach you a little bit about composting. So with this guy, like beautiful sandwich layers of peanut butter and jelly in this compost bin, but those layers are very, very important. There are things you need for compost. You need to have browns, greens, air and water. Now let's talk about what are browns and greens. While your browns are going to be things like pine straw and clippings that are dried up and tripled and then leaf pieces. So that's going to be very, very rich in carbon. So you need that carbon to be going into your compost. Your greens are going to be very rich in nitrogen. This is going to be your clippings from your lawn. Your sweet potatoes, if you have some that you cut off the ends when you were cooking them. Your green stalks, things you're not going to eat. So these are going to be two things that we're going to layer in our compost. You'll notice that ours has vents on the front. That's so it can be properly aerated. It needs that air to continue the process of breaking down. This isn't food that is rotting. This is food that is basically breaking down. It's biodegrading. Then also what we'll need is we'll need water. So water is very important. You want your compost to be about as damp as a kitchen sponge. It needs to have a lot of moisture in it. That's going to help it break down. The other thing we do to help this is we're going to aerate it by turning it over with our handy-dandy pitchfork. We'll get out here, we'll turn it, reset that top layer with some more browns and then we'll continue feeding those greens on top to create those nice layers. So compost is interesting because it is almost like a living organism even though it's made of a lot of other living things. We talked about how it needs to breathe, it needs water, and it needs nutrients. But the other things that live in there are almost just as fascinating. So of course, in compost, you're going to have worms. Classic, you're going to see these guys breaking down that material. You're going to have, sometimes you're going to have ants. You're going to have slimy slimy slugs. And then you're also going to have pill bugs or sow bugs. So all of these guys are what we call mechanical biodegraders. They're going to break down that material by tearing it apart, tearing it into those pieces and making smaller parts. Now the other thing that's going to live in this compost is a little bit harder to see, but just as gross and disgusting. That's going to be your bacteria and your fungus. So these guys are actually going to live in your compost. They're going to be breaking down those materials in a chemical reaction and making them into something new, allowing them to turn into that composting material. So while you may not have a setup like this, you can do composting in a lot of different things. You can do it in a big bin. You could get it at a local department store. Another thing is you can do it in a bucket. Something as simple as this is a great way to recycle. So what we're going to do is we are going to start by layering in our browns in front. Some of our greens on top. Started a compost. You can let this sit in the sun, let it bake from the outside a little bit. That heat's going to start breaking things down. And every three days you can do a couple of different things. You can get in there with a trowel and stir it around. Or you can just give it a good shake. Now you can also add some sand, some loamy materials and a little bit of dirt to start this breakdown if you want. But usually the water and the greens starting to break down will be all you need to start to a compost at home. So a few things that we have to just finally end on to talk about compost. You'll notice that ours have these wire racks on toast. It's not nature's buffet. You want to make sure that you're protecting it from all of those things like little raccoons and little squirrels. They can get in there and eat it but we really don't want to be feeding those guys out in the wild. We want them off eating what they should be eating. They're a natural part of their diet. Not my leftover eggshells. The other thing with this is you'll notice there are some things we don't compost. So we don't compost meat or dairy. Those things are going to rot in a whole different way and attract things we don't want living in our compost. We don't do a lot of things like make sure you're getting off your fruit stickers. If you're composting bunches of greens make sure you're taking out those rubber bands. Anything that would be trash we don't want in there. No oils, greases or lards. Once again you're getting into a rotting situation. And also those oils will coat the outside of things and then the water and the sun will not be able to break them down like they should. You're not going to compost. This is going to be very, very gross. So please make sure that you post a video. You show me what you guys have been doing. Post me a picture in the comments. We want to see Friday at our wrap up with what you guys have been doing with composting. So with composting all this work why are we doing this for? That's for what's going to be waiting in the bottom of your compost bin after a year or so. You're going to be able to go out and get this breaking down. This is still has a little bit of pine straw material in it that you can see falling out is that beautiful black soil. Things we're going to be able to put in the bottom of our tomato plants. I've already taken some of this and put in my squash for the year and it will make your plants grow bigger and beautiful and produce more fruit. So it's something that we're very thankful here. We're feeding back in and we're feeding back into the ecosystem.