slackers? not so much.

yeah. a long and quick, busy, full, hot and eventful 3 months have passed and no posting. fear not friends, this does not mean that we have not been busy composting. just the opposite in fact. while we have juggled our lives, our families and friends, our jobs and our fun, grasshopper hill compost has been a major part of our lives. it has been dirty and fun and at times tedious, but mostly just right. we have slowly and surely acclimated ourselves to the process of our compost project. and we just got some press! my awesome friend amy anderson came out to the island and visited our compost spot, did the rounds as we went to the island businesses to pick up their food wastes and then she wrote a story! here is the link. thank you amy.

we are moving from the first of our 3 bin system to our second bin this weekend. that is big (smelly) stuff, let me tell you. we will also be layering in all the stuff left over from my friend erin's garlic party... a bunch of us trimming over 2300 heads of garlic. real serious awesome fun... good music and wine and friends and a task. big stuff going on around the compost bin.

until next time (and not 3 months from now)

grasshopper hill~ the history

kyle and i had been talking about community composting on the island for quite awhile but it was always a lot of talk and because we are both super busy people, not a lot of action. finally this winter we decided that we needed to act on such a simple conviction and do something. talk the talk and walk the walk. i had already talked about this idea with my good friend leila who also lives and loves the island and she supported our idea from the beginning. once kyle and i decided we wanted move forward with our idea i went to leila and her and her husband generously decided to let us use a piece of their land for our base of operations and grasshopper hill compost was born. leila also pointed us in the direction of agricultural grants offered through The Island Institute and we decided to go for it. we were awarded a small grant in april to get our project started and we have been moving forward ever since.

we built the 3 bin composting system almost entirely from found and donated objects right here on the island. we have used pallets left over from construction sights, trap wire washed up on the beach and donated by lobstermen friends, rocks, rope and wood washed up on the beaches.

with the grant money we purchased some new shovels and pitchforks, printed laminates indicating what is and is not compost-able and brochures and signs to distribute around the island community in hopes to educate and inspire our community about the benefits of composting. we also used some of the grant money to purchase buckets to give to those that want to join in and start saving their food wastes for composting. we have also had buckets donated by local restaurants in portland.

everything is ready to go. we are going to try to track how much waste we save from going into our transfer station (dump) and is being used to compost and turned into a product that will help our soil, our plants and our gardens.