One of the projects that goes along with the new house is choosing and building a new composting system. Currently, we compost kitchen scraps in a large, outdoor trash can. Issa drilled holes in the side for aeration, and she knocks it over and rolls it around now and then for turning.

After about six months of this, we have approximately half-filled one of the cans. But we plan to raise a pig or two at the new place, and pigs generate a lot of manure. Manure makes great compost. Some folks say you shouldn’t put animal manure compost onto edible plants, but other folks do it, and all things considered, we’re going to go ahead and do it. After all, what the hell else are we going to do with that much manure? Seems a shame to waste it.

I figure any risk of contamination can be reduced if we make sure the stuff is fully composted and dig the material into the beds in the fall, giving any contaminants the entire winter to… well, I don’t know. But it seems like a better idea than, say, top-dressing the beds while the live plants are present. Which we may end up doing as well, depending on various factors. But it just doesn’t seem to make sense to keep kitchen scraps in a separate pile from the manure, especially when the smart thing to do is probably to feed the kitchen scraps to the pigs, and then compost the resulting manure, as opposed to throwing the scraps straight into the bin, denying the pigs any nutritional value that might be gained.

Anyway, we are considering our preferred way of composting all the manure, yard clippings, and so forth that the property is likely to produce.

Now a good old pile on the ground has simplicity and cheapness going for it, but we’d prefer something a bit more contained, both to clearly delineate one pile from another (when they’re at different stages of processing), and to keep it from attracting unwanted pests.

You can find plans on-line for multi-bin units like the one pictured above, and they’re not too difficult to build, but definitely a bit time-consuming and requires purchasing a few hundred dollars in lumber, or sourcing it scrap.

Isn’t it nice, then, that you can build pretty much the same damn thing using cheap-to-free shipping pallets? Doesn’t look quite as snazzy, but given that it’s designed to hold rotting trash, maybe that’s not actually such a big deal.

Ah, but you still have to turn the damn thing, right? This is typically done by shoveling the contents of one bin into the next, empty bin. One bin is kept empty for this purpose. Alternatively, you can turn the contents in-place, which is more work and less effective. Alternatively, you can not bother turning it, but this dramatically slows the composting process.

Commercial compost bins like the one pictured above often have a tumbling mechanism, to ease turning of the compost. These produce compost the fastest and with the least work, but they can be very expensive. A 55-gallon unit like shown above might cost around $200.

So why not build your own on the cheap using a 55-gallon drum? This is currently our leading choice, although we plan to build a vertical tumbler instead of a horizontal one. A vertical one can have the opening at the end, which should be structurally more sound and easier to engineer than an opening at the wall. Also, a vertical one can easily be built to pour out into a wheelbarrow. The narrower design will allow more compost volume for a similar axis of axle, meaning that a 10′ length of galvanized steel conduit might support three barrels instead of two (not sure if the math actually works out on that one). Additionally, the vertical tumbling will produce more motion in the compost, hopefully speeding the process up.

We’re leaning towards something like this:

Additional barrels could be added by simply extending the design to the sides.

Here are links to the instructions for building the two homemade composters shown:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler-2/

http://www.instructables.com/id/compost-bin/

For bonus, here’s another clever design that simply lays the drum down on scooter-wheels. This method avoids all necessity of installing an axle, although it loses the ability to get a wheel-barrow up underneath your bin for easy emptying.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler/