LCRC Changes and News

Hello LCRC customers,

I recently started a full-time job in Denver as the social engagement manager for Metro State College's Alumni Association. The curbside pickup service just isn't bringing in enough money for me to pay the bills. The bad news is I will not be able to continue to do pickups on Tuesday mornings. The good news is that:

1. I will do a final pickup of all recycling this Saturday, December 12. I will NOT do recycling pickups after this next Saturday.
2. I will continue to do pickups for compost once per month (as only one of my customers actually needs pickups more than once per month anyway). I would like to continue offering and building this community service because I think it is of great value to Lyons. I will do pickups the last Saturday morning of every month, and I will continue to charge people $5 per one bin picked up. I will only be picking up items that I can compost locally (i.e. after Saturday, I will no longer pick up meat, bones, dairy, etc). Please see website for details on what you can compost: http://www.lyonsrecycling.com/Composting.html.
3. I will continue to pick up tubes and tires from the bike shops on the last Saturday of every month.
4. I will continue to pick up hard-to-recycle materials on the last Saturday of every month.

If you haven't paid for your recycle bins yet, please leave them out next Saturday morning, and I will pick them up along with your recycling.

Thanks!
-Lizzy

New Foreclosure Cleanup Service

In addition to offering garage and home organization and cleanup services, I'm now going to offer foreclosure cleanup services. This means I will come in, organize the entire home, take away all furnishings and other items, recycling/composting/donating as much as possible. Call me for details: 303-903-2768~

I spent all of last Thursday organizing a woman's garage. When we first opened the door, the mountain of phone books and other stuff started to fall out of the garage. By the end of the day I had a space big enough for a large pickup open in the garage. I recycled 40 or so phone books, donated a chair, table and various items to the second-hand store, I composted a half bin of foodstuff and napkins, I recycled one garbage bag of plastic bags, and I recycled four bins of plastic, cans, and bottles. I was left with just one small garbage bag of actual garbage! And it took me just 6.5 hours.

Photos of Compost in action!

Here are some photos Jonathan Dowdell took last week of "composting in action at the Lyons Farmette."

This weekend in Lyons

My business continues to grow slowly. The mayor of Lyons wants to do compost with me. Cool! I am increasingly more excited about doing the compost because I can keep it almost totally local, with a few exceptions when I have to bring meat/bones/dairy compost into Boulder. For the most part, however, I'll be able to turn my customers' compost directly into soil that will enrich the gardens of other residents. I think that's neat.

Yesterday's Tour de Coup, organized by Betsy Burton of the Lyons Farmette, seemed to be quite successful. Lots of people showed up from all over the Front Range. I met people (and lots of kids) from as far away as Denver and Fort Collins. The weather held, though it threatened a bit.

The Duck Race was also fun on Saturday, and we hit the farmer's market downtown for a bit, tried out the delicious crepes and looked at a bit of fun jewelry. We also saw some friends. There are all kinds of interesting things to do in Lyons when I stick around for the weekend. I don't know if I won anything, but I'll check in a few minutes. Happy week!

Getting Paypal on the LCRC Website

Getting a Paypal button on the Lyons Curbside Website is proving to be a big pain. I am working on it. In the meantime, if you want to pay with a credit or debit card, please utilize the Paypal button on the top, right side of the Lyons Curbside blog.

I have one option for $1. Please include the dollar amount on your invoice as the "quantity".

In other news, the first LCRC compost bin is already generating heat, and it's only been one week! It's currently full of apples from the Farmette and from Jo and Dan Greenberg. As well it has squash plants, zukes, straw, some of the Farmette's excellent dirt, and water.

Check out my article on the Lyons Farmette and Mike Whipp and Betsy Burton in this week's Lyons Recorder!

Bin built

I've got the first straw bale bin built (cost about $100), and will be filling it in with some layers of compost starting tomorrow. How exciting! Now I need some folks in town to start composting with me. Here is a photo of the first Farmette Community Compost bin.

Community Composting at the Lyons Farmette, step #1

This week, potentially this weekend, I'm going to start building the compost "bin" at the Farmette (depending on whether or not Mike and Betsy will let me start!) My idea is to build straw bale compost bins. These require quite a bit of space, of which there is plenty at the Farmette. I like this idea because according to this neat book I'm reading, "Four-Season Harvest," by Eliot Coleman, straw is an important component to any compost bin and the straw bales actually serve as part of the composting process.

I'll start by clearing, flattening, digging, and weeding the space allotted for the compost bin. Then I'll build straw bale block walls for a bin in a brickwork mosaic. I'm considering building two "bins" right off the bat, but I'm going to see how much straw bales cost first.

Then, over the course of the next six months to a year, I'll layer in various types of material--regular dirt, green matter (food waste from the community), brown matter (yard waste, grass clippings, etc), and various other things (perhaps sawdust, maybe some horse poop, and I may even try some compostable cups and plates and such). I'll slowly fill the bin with these things, mixing and watering when needed. Eventually, the straw bales will break down, and I'll cut and remove the bailing twine and then mix the composted bales in with the compost.

At this point, there are a few different things that can be done with the compost. It can be spread on the garden as heavily composted mulch, or it can be left for another few months to compost some more. I also may be able to use the straw bales for another round.

I plan on taking photos of this whole process. What a fun adventure this will be!