Investing in Black Gold

Compost! I love this stuff! I love the deep earthy smell and the feel of it in my hands. And I love that now I can make it myself!

Growing a garden is on my top 10 list of things to do before I die. Thankfully I married a man who grew up with one and knows more than I do about it. So after moving to our new house with a real yard we decided it was time to get started.

So Nate (with some limited help from is preggie wife) has been busy digging our back yard for weeks and weeks in preparation for building 3 retaining walls to terrace the steep hillside we have to work with. It is so exciting to see our vision slowly materializing. I keep telling my little tomato, squash, pumpkin, bok choy and broccoli seedlings how much they are going to love their new home and they better survive until it's ready.


So in preparation for becoming a gardener, I started a training program offered by the County of Santa Clara and graduated in March as a "Master Composter" - sounds impressive, huh. It was three months of weekly meetings and weekend field trips learning about how to make good dirt. Boring you say? It was fascinating! I met a lot of very interesting people from all walks of life and levels of experience and learned about gardening, microbiology, pest management, building my own wooden worm bin, presentation skills, way more than I expected at the outset. Boy do I feel like a eco-nerd now.

To 'pay back' the training we are required to do 50 hours of volunteering this year, teaching workshops, doing presentations at schools and table displays at events. I just gave my first workshop last night at a Relief Society meeting and had SO much fun. At the end I realized how much I really did learn and it was exciting to share it with others and see them get excited about it too. Especially the worm bins!



These guys are hilarious - they explain how to build a worm bin and keep you laughing the whole time...it's really well done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFwqhMW6rR0

So - I've already got 1 worm bin, 2 compost bins and am making plans for a third, and I don't even have a real garden yet. Oh well, there are worse hobbies to indulge in, right? Just doing my part to keep junk out of the landfill...and not have to buy dirt - it makes me laugh thinking about every time I've actually shelled out money to buy dirt. Instead I prefer to invest our trash in a little in Black Gold.