My Father's Daughter

My dad was a gadget man and he liked to try out new things. When we were growing up he collected them like people collect stamps. He had hotdog cookers, crepe makers, milkshake machines and so on. Some got relegated to the basement and a few are still in mom's cabinets. His last fancy was some sort of software he and Uncle Cal found on the internet so they could talk to each other over the computer (back around 2000). Since I worked on a computer all day long I was a good person to experiment with. Both of them were calling me while I was working. I had this crazy laptop that had the speakers coming out the bottom. I remember hearing dad’s muffled voice while I was typing. I had to tip the computer over sideways and talk to him through the bottom. There was an easier way invented in the 1870’s called the telephone.

I am my father’s daughter and I inherited the desire for the unusual and a willingness to try anything once. You never know some of the crazy things actually work. In the last year I’ve gotten two great microwave inventions, one for steaming and one for pressure cooking, you know the kind of stuff I’m talking about…”14.99 if you call now!”. A few of my gadgets from this year are collecting dust in the barn or in a box of kitchen stuff I never use. That box is collecting dust bunnies under our bed. I don’t think I will be able to put my latest contraption under the bed if it doesn’t work out. Thank-goodness for E-bay, dad didn’t have it but I do. I bought the thing on E-bay and can surely sell it there.

You need a little history to fathom why I bought what I did. Somewhere along the way Jeff told our friend Ray that horses produce 40 pounds of poop a day. Ray wonders what we do with all that poop. I wonder what we do with all that poop; with two horses that amounts to 29,200 pounds a year. Last summer I tried composting some of it. I mixed up a cart full of poop with a cart full of old hay and a cart full of leaves. Once a week Sadie and I went down to the poop pile and flipped it around. Summer turned into fall and I forgot about my poop project.

This spring I needed some compost for the trees we planted and remembered the poop project. Sadie and I headed down back to the pile and were disappointed; the top of the pile looked the same as it did last summer. I jabbed at it with my pitch fork and to our amazement underneath the top layer was black, crumbly, rich compost.

My mind was at work while we mulched the new trees. How much compost can I make with 29,200 pounds of poop and what is the easiest way to do this? The answer was a few clicks on the internet: The Compost Tumbler: Makes Compost in 14 Days! On the web site you get the Tumbler, the thermometer and the activator for one not so low price. In that respect I am not like my dad, he would have bought it anyway. I switched personalities and became my mother’s daughter and searched for tumblers on E-bay. After watching for a few weeks I found a used one. The lady advertising it said it didn’t work out for them. I switched back to being my father’s daughter, bid on it anyway and won the auction. I mean really, I have composting experience and how could this thing not work.

The Compost Tumbler arrived on Thursday. Like my dad, I have a knack for getting other people to help me out with my schemes. Jeff put the tumbler together for me and set it up near the garden. Following the directions in the manual, we raked up the right combination of fresh grass clippings from the pasture, old leaves and horse poop. He mowed over them to mulch them up and helped me get one load of it into the Tumbler. Hmmm, the thing has to be 2/3 full and one load barely hit the ¼ mark. At that point I lost my helper.

Saturday morning I raked up three loads of grass, a load of old hay, a load of leaves and a load of horse poop. I mulched it all down with the lawnmowers and used enough gas to buy the equivalent of 10+ bags of cow compost at Lowes. After 4 hours of work, blisters on my hands and a sunburned nose the Compost Tumbler is loaded. All I have to do now is rotate the drum 5 times a day for the next 14 days. In the mean time I’ll be thinking about an easier way to get all this stuff into the Tumbler. I wish my dad was here, I’m sure he would have some ideas!