I love the idea of compost.  I love producing something so valuable-- earth-- out of what I grew up thinking of as garbage.  I love pulling the moist, black soil out of the composter and adding it to Colorado's dismal clay soil and watching things grow.  It's like magic: the best kind of magic that God ordained from the days of the Garden.

Our first composter (in Chicago) was always full.  Contained in a tall, black garbage-can like composter, it was impossible to turn and yielded a little compost each spring, which we dilligently worked into the already-rich soil.  I still loved it, but I wanted MORE.  FASTER.  (It's the American way, really.)

When I bought our first house in Denver and planted a large garden plot, I invested in a tumbling composter.  It promised yields in 6-8 weeks depending how often I turned it and how much sun and moisture it got.  My problem was this: because we produced raw compostable materials (i.e. kitchen scraps) in waves-- and more quickly than it could turn out compost-- we were always adding fresh scraps on top of half-made compost in the barrel, and it was never done.  So in the winter I'd throw out my scraps again, and each spring I'd get one batch of beautiful compost that "cooked" in its black plastic tub all winter.

So my plan now is not to add to it continually, but let the batch of kitchen scraps (greens) + yard waste (browns) cook for 6-8 weeks.  I tumble it almost daily (in the summer, several times) and the batch we started in December is now done.  Yea!  (Not bad for winter!)  Which means I need a place to store the yard scraps and kitchen scraps that are waiting to go into the tumbler.

This is green plastic garden fencing (it was less than ten dollars for 25 feet.)  I cut about 10 feet and twisty-tied it together into a cylinder.  If it ever gets full (which I doubt) I can just lift the fencing up and move it several feet over, and then shovel all the compostables back into it, thus flipping, or turning all the compost.  Then every 6-8 weeks I'll fill the tumbler from this. 

My hope is to have enough compost not just to feed my SFGs, but also to add to the soil in all my other dargen spaces, since our soil is so poor.

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