Clever Compost

Now that we finally have a house of our own and have the recycling under control, Hubby and I decided it was time to start composting!

Actually, we did have a nice pile going a couple of apartments ago- the place we were living when we got married we intended to stay for a few years because the landlady was absolutely lovely. Unfortunately she passed away a little more than a year after we moved in and we had to move yet again. We still chuckle remembering how she used to lower notes to us in a basket from her kitchen window to ours! So sweet...

Anyway, while we have about half an acre of land around our house, there's no convenient out-of-the-way spot easily accessible from the kitchen, so an open pile didn't seem like a good idea.
So we headed over to Home Depot to see what they had in the way of bins, and the only one they had was this:

It's an old wine barrel! They drilled some holes around the side for aeration.

And put a hinged door in the top where you load everything in. Instead of using a pitchfork to turn the pile, you just roll the barrel around once a week or so.

I love that you can still read the label on the barrel!

I thought "How clever!" and "What a wonderful way to recycle!" and "I'll have an old wine barrel outside my kitchen, that's so cool!" and "This is going to make it so easy to compost!"

What I didn't think was "This barrel is way too heavy for me to pick up by myself!" Which it is. So, I guess compost turning will be a weekend activity when Hubby is home to help flip the barrel back upright!