I am the laziest composter. I’ve thrown all of my food scraps into this bin off the side of my porch for a couple years now and my chickens come running for their lives to investigate and see if anything good has been thrown out. They are often disappointed when it is my morning coffee grounds. I throw their old bedding and garden waste in there too. I don’t compost weeds, contaminated soil/ plants, paper or grass clippings. 

I turned it for the first time early this spring when the ground was still very frozen and was shocked to see how warm it was and beautiful and crumbly. Healthy compost! I mistakenly thought our cold damp climate and my composting inattention would make it a cold wet pile. 

Realize now I need to move it further away from the house in case it ever gets too hot! I will miss the days of throwing scraps out of my kitchen window. 

The chickens have a half acre to run around and a great coop but they hang around the compost bin so much that they’ve begun to roost on it at night (4). Currently they are excavating to the bottom of the bin probably looking for grubs. 

I’m currently using this compost up in a layer in my new lasagna beds. It has a lot of hot chicken sh\*t mixed in it from them that I don’t want to mix it my main soil layer. Going to restart the pile soon and maybe check it again in two years. 

my composting machines