Joan and Jonathan, our next door neighbors, are great people. They are flower children of the 60′s. They are really into all sorts of natural stuff into some, what’s the word … odd stuff. We live in Newton, Mass — one of the original suburbs, so lots are small. Our house is on a whopping 0.16 acres and is nearly covered the house and the driveway and perhaps a detached garage. No “back 40′s” here in Newton.
But Joan and Jonathan use their “front 40″ to grow corn, squash, tomatoes and all sorts of other veggies. They grow sunflowers. They have rabbits. They keep bees. There’s not much room left for lawn (which is good). And they … compost.
Think of the resale values! Ok, I recycle and do all this other stuff that’s not hard at all. But hey, I like my creature comforts, and composting is just strange. For the earthy-crunchy-granolan crowd. The Vermonters. I would never do something like that.
Or would I?
I mow my lawn and put the clippings in paper bags. During the summer, I might fill a bag of clippings in a week. In the fall, we rake and fill up a bunch of bags. In the Spring we clip and cut and rake. All go in paper bags out to the curb to be recycled, perhaps 25 or 30 each year. And most of the food waste goes into the disposer.
Then in Spring we buy a big pile of bark mulch for the beds, buy fertilizer for the grass, and dig a little garden where we grow a big basil plant or two and maybe some other herbs or a tomato plant.
So, I am lugging bags out to the curb, and lugging in bags of mulch and fertilizer.
Or, I could make compost. With a little reading, composting looks pretty easy. It doesn’t take up a lot of space. It’s supposed to not smell (certainly less bad than rotting grass clippings). And the equipment is inexpensive. In fact, one big box of paper bags and a few extras, plus fertilizer, plus the big pile of bark much easily costs several hundred dollars each year, probably more. So I am not looking at this as a way to save the planet as much as a way to save effort.
In fact, I bet it’s no harder, and perhaps easier than those stupid paper bags. So I’ll order a composter and let you know how it goes.
(Just don’t tell the other neighbors)