Compost. Let's Get This Out of the Way, Shall We?

The first time I saw a compost bucket in someone's house, I will admit to being a little freaked out. This particular compost receptacle was an old ice cream container, a faded yellow tub full of banana peels, coffee grounds and egg shells that set next to the kitchen sink at one of my friend's houses. I was 16 at the time, and that bucket was like, so disgusting.

My friend caught me eyeing this festering heap of trash, so she explained very nonchalantly that her mother used the compost to enrich their garden soil. Clearly she did not think it was a big deal, and I felt she was slightly cooler than me, so I immediately placed compost in my Actually Kind of Cool mental category. It's still surprising that this made such a big impression on me, because I'm pretty sure we then we ran out the door to drink someone else's mother's vodka or smoke cigarettes or something horribly teenage-ish.

I only knew one thing about vegetable gardens at that time. We had one in my backyard when I was a child, and we were forced to sod over it when the snapping turtles from the pond down the block decided it was the perfect place to lay their eggs. Our cat, who had been abandoned at that very same pond as a newborn kitten, had a hero complex and thought he could battle snapping turtles. Before you know it, my father was in the front yard standing between a fifty pound pregnant killer turtle and a twenty pound hissing feline with a shovel raised above his head, yelling, "The garden has GOT TO GO!"

And it went. So did the cat.

Here we are, seven or so years later, and I have compost in my kitchen too. Not on the counter, since we don't have anywhere 'out back' to dump it every day. No, I have a shoebox in my freezer lined with a Target bag, and into that shoebox goes our eggshells, coffee grounds, potato peels and all other non-meat food waste. Joshua and I walk it down the alley to a compost container that sits in someone's backyard. The compost we contribute to then gets hauled over to a neighborhood garden, which is growing organic fruit and vegetables. We are doing our (very!) small part to contribute to decreasing post-consumer waste and support community, urban gardens.

Soapbox moment: Composting is extremely easy to do if you have either freezer space, or the desire to drop it off somewhere every other day or so. It's expensive to buy mulch, so you are not only reducing your local landfill, you are helping out local farmers and gardeners. Two bonus points: Less trash to take out. And the look on your friends faces when they open up your freezer!