Produce Coming In/ Composting

If you are just now joining the blog, you may not remember that in the beginning I wrote a "manifesto" about trying to grow enough food in weight to feed one or more people. I estimated that about 225 KG (almost 500lbs) would at 4 calories per gram sustain one adult. I am not intending to only eat the food I grow and have already given some produce away to friends and even to strangers walking by our house.

Well up to now I have not been able to weigh the food I am producing. Not any more, check out the slick new food scale. Now I can weigh the food stuff that I produce.

Here you can see a head of lettuce that I plucked from my garden. To my surprise I found that it weights about 0.25 lbs (120 grams). Well, I discussed the situation with my family, shall I count the food the garden had produced up to now? We have eaten a lot of lettuce, radishes, broccoli raab and Swiss chard. I think that I would estimate 10 kilograms would be a very conservative estimation. I will start my count there, so now I have 10.2 kg for the year.


Our household has been composting for many years. Here you can see our compost bin that we use. We compost all of the vegtable food waste, much of the garden waste and shredded papers. My wife has checked out books about composting and we know that our compost bin is in too shady of an area. The amazing thing is that we will fill it up and then the material composts down and practically disappears. I have never gotten any compost out of my bin for my garden and we have been using it for more than 5 years! This seems to be a Holy (Holey) Mystery. I am glad all that stuff is not in the landfill. I have faith that some day I will have compost.

I also put all my leaves, clippings and anything other organic waste in my increasing small natural area to decompose naturally.


My motto is "It is my CARBON and I'm keeping it." When I drive around and see plastic bags with grass clippings from unnaturally green yards by the street waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck I want to open my window and say "It's your CARBON. Keep it." I hear that other parts of the country have more strict/progresive/environmentally sound policies about yard/garden 'waste', but here it goes all to the landfill. . .