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!

Community composting at the Lyons Farmette

Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost will have its own community compost bins based at the Lyons farmette. This will reduce the pickup cost for compost from $9 per pickup to just $5 per pickup. It will also limit the type of food waste that can be composted. For example, people who choose the $5 per pickup option will not be able to compost their meat, dairy products, breads, or bones. However, there is an extensive list of items that can be composted (please see LCRC website Compost Page), and special $9 pickups can still be requested for Zero Waste events and the above-mentioned hard-to-compost items. 

Residents will not be able to utilize the community compost without going through Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost's pickup service. I will be closely monitoring and managing the bins to ensure they function properly.

-Lizzy Scully