Compost a Solamente

Because there is now only light in the morning for me to work in the yard -- the sun has set by the time I get home from work -- I decided to see how long it would take me to do a load of compost by myself before work. Jenna is up but is getting ready for school. Jeff is not up. The dogs are not any help with this sort of thing.

I went out about 15 minutes before Jenna had to leave for the bus, so about 7:45, and was able to load up a tarp with leaves that had already been piled up. It took less than 10 minutes to rake them onto the tarp and pull it back to the compost area. Then I came in to wish Jenna well at school. Once she had left, I returned to the compost area, took the cover off the shredder/chipper and moved it into position. It took a couple of attempts to get it started. It took about 10 minutes to feed the leaves through the hopper.

I decided to try something different. I took all the leaves that I had just processed and put them back on the tarp. It reduced the apparent volume to about 33% of the original. Then I fed the leaves through again. The mass was now about 25% of the original or maybe less. It took about 20 minutes overall. So, it's doable in short periods; in a half an hour I can do a complete load of leaves. It will take at least a week at this rate, but it has the benefit of giving me a morning workout (in addition to walking the dogs). It's raining right now, so it may not work to do this everyday.