Compost Bin

We are excited about our new home, but in order to even begin making the transition to homestead, we needed to get a few basics out of the way first. This project may not seem as glamorous as others, but it is one of the most important and, surprisingly, one of the most gratifying: The Compost Bin!

There are a swath of benefits to composting. We found that food scraps made up a large portion of our weekly trash which means we were able to save a few bucks by dropping to a smaller bin once we began composting. Turns out we're not alone; food scraps and other organic waste accounts for up to 50% of the average household trash. Instead of hauling that off to a landfill, those materials can be broken down into nutrient rich soil that your plants will love! A simple google search will reveal all the thousands of reasons of how composting is beneficial and extremely important to our environment so we'll leave that to the experts.

We don't have a ton of experience building things and were able to take this compost bin on without too much hassle. There are many designs out there ranging in size and complexity from 5-gallon buckets to designs Frank Gehry himself would be impressed by. We decided to go middle of the road with a relatively simple 2-Bin design.

We chose to use cedar for its natural resistance to pests and decay, its lack of chemical additions (looking at you pressure-treated wood), and we also happen to love the look of it. Cedar can be pretty pricey at big box stores, but we've found there are usually plenty of people selling it on Craigslist. Commonly you can find lumber yards with lower grade wood at a fraction of the cost, but you'll have to watch out for damaged lumber. We've found that even if we end up with a few bits of unusable material, its still a fraction of the cost of buying from a large store and often the wood can be used for other projects

With this design, we chose to use chicken wire to help contain the compost, while also allowing for air flow to help break everything down quickly. The chicken wire is cheaper than walling everything in with more cedar, but we've found that larger debris can get stuck in it (see the right side of our box; lesson learned, sticks were not a great choice for the bin...), which makes turning the pile a bit more difficult. Having had bins both ways, they're both perfectly acceptable and work great. If you decide to use chicken wire, we suggest attaching it before fully framing the rest of the bin to help cover the edges of the wire.

The frame of our bin is made of 2x4s with 4x4s as the main support pillars. We used deck screws to join the pieces and a staple gun to attach the chicken wire. We originally had made outward swinging doors on the front and upward swinging doors on the top to fully enclose the bins but have since removed them. We don't throw meat or dairy products into our bin and have found that rodents and other pests aren't much of an issue which was our original concern. Removing the doors makes using the bins that much easier and looks much cleaner too. As you can see in the pictures, we've slipped and let some weeds reap the benefits of our compost. We'll be sure to remove that to help save the nutrients for our veggies.

Each bin is roughly 3' x 3' x 3'. This seemed an appropriate size for the amount of compost we could handle. Having the second bin allows us to begin a new pile as the the first pile becomes more broken down and ready for use in the garden.

We hope you can see how it easy it is to build a compost bin and start reaping all the benefits of composting. This project is pretty simple and doesn't take more than a few hours. We would love to see any designs you have come up with as well so be sure to send us some pictures of yours and we will post them for everyone to see!