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RE: ecoVillages Journal #33: Week 2 Of My New Off-grid Yurt Life

in ecoTrain4 years ago

This is sooo cool, seeing you all tucked in and ready for the rains to come! Your yurt looks admirable, and I'm sure with that heater it will feel as cozy as it looks. Oh, and your toilet area is quite aesthetic. One word of advice, coming from my personal experience in humanure composting over the last three months in California: My system was very similar, using wood shavings and straw to compost. It worked quite well, until I started adding kitchen compost, around the fourth week or so. This prompted some local critter to dig up the food, and scatter the crappy straw all around the area. :-( The solution was to stop adding food, which meant a few more attempts on their part (and a few more mornings of raking the shitty straw back together), but once they learned that there was no more food in it, they left my shit alone. So instead of composting our kitchen waste, we spread it around the property, where it disappeared (presumably eaten) within a night, including eggshells and corn husks. This situation is of course far from universal, depending on the local fauna, and it may not apply to your place. But having had a few very unpleasant morning chores, I thought I'd better share this.
Best of luck with everything!

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 4 years ago  

oh woW!,, Awesome advice.. Thank you so much! i have been holding off actually putting the kitchen waste in.. what you say makes sense! and id REALLy hate to have turdy straw everywhere.. maybe ill just put leaves and add some worms when i see em.. <3

Oh, the worms are very resourceful, going by the premise: if you build it they will come!

What a nightmare! You have some wierd stuff happening when egg shells and corn husks are dissappearing, I wonder what would eat those?!

As for the egg shells I guess anyone who can smell the rest of dried yolk on the inside, and is big enough to crunch up the whole thing. In the case of the corn husks I think the wind may also have played a role. But the main suspect for digging up the compost is the javelina or the coyote. I haven't seen any evidence of the former, and only heard the distant yip-yips of the latter, but I can't think of anyone else who is big enough to make such a mess. Unless... well, I still may be surprised about what a hare can do!

Do you have a hunting camera to place outside to record?

Hahahaha, no. Also I'm not there at the moment. But anyhow, I prefer approaching the matter slowly, maybe by making a few wrong guesses before I arrive at a definite conclusion. It's more fun that way. Though a motion activated night-vision camera is still a fine thing.

Hahahah OK, I get it 😁 these cameras are quite cheap theses days, I got one from an Aldi store, (not sure if you in Europe or where haah) for 80 euro and its working great! I use it though to keep eye on my plants for critters😊

I'm in Mexico right now, the property I was talking about is in the US, but I'm quite familiar with Aldi from Germany: buy decent quality non-brand name stuff at your discount supermarket while supply lasts. And yes, it's good to have evidence of those critters as they're taking their late-night snack from your garden! 😆