Simple and Easy: Starting a compost pile

Rachel Hoppe
Feb 12, 2020
3 min read

During the winter months, when we aren't consumed with farm work and chores, I usually compile a list of projects, goals, and new things to try out. With the help of pinterest, I've compiled a healthy list so by January and February I'm "chopping at the bit" to get started! While the dreary, cold, rainy weather isn't the best time to start hefty projects, I feel that it opens the opportunity to add to our homestead. This simple project took one afternoon to compile and build.

While there are a wide variety of ready-to-use composters available online and in stores, we try to use what have laying around to accomplish our projects ( see my blog post about our greenhouse)!

For our compost project we opted to use wood pallets. It seems we always have plenty of these lying around for on the spot projects such as this! I didn't get pictures of every step but we used a total of 5 pallets, a drill, screws, and few extra pieces of wood boards to add stability. I decided on a 2 bin compost area so as one pile is "aging", I could get another started.

Before even starting this project I had to do some research on the compilation of a compost pile. While I knew some of it included kitchen scraps I had no idea that ratios were so important. The correct ratio for a compost pile is 1 part green to 3 parts brown. So lets talk about 'greens' and 'browns'. So compost 'greens' would typically include fresh grass clippings, green leaves, vegetable scraps, fruit scraps, coffee grounds, and livestock manure. Some examples of browns would be hay, straw, peat moss, small twigs, newspaper, coffee filter, dryer lint, dried grass, pine needles, and dried leaves.

I've included my own diagram below!

We started ours with a good 4" layer of sticks and twigs. Added some dried leaves and then we used what kitchen scraps I had and mixed it with fresh rabbit manure. On top of that we added shredded newspaper ( the kids had fun tearing the paper) and peat moss. We have continued adding to our pile in this order for the past couple of weeks! Its important to note not to use any fats, oils, dairy, or meat because it can definitely contribute to a bad smelling compost pile!

A good rule of thumb is for every 1 bucket of green you add to your pile, make sure to add 2-3 buckets of brown! But be careful not to add too much brown. Too much carbon can slow down decomposition. The pile must also stay moist but make sure not to soak it ( kind of hard to refrain from with all the rain we've had). To speed up the decomposition process, make sure to turn the pile every once and a while!! As a final note, I do put a small barrier on the front. You can use whatever you have (straw bale, small gate, etc) to keep animals out of the pile. My chickens do succeed in getting into it but they actually do me a favor by scratching, digging , and turning it up!