Compost / Outhouse

I know a lot of people are interested in making a compost pile.  Either buying a pre-made box to put their leftover fruits and veggies in or building something that would work.  To have a functioning compost pile, you need to 'cook' the ingredients.  Even a cold compost has to get to 155 degrees and takes several months to 'cure'.  I don't have the time or the space to devote to that. So, after much brainstorming, my husband and I came up with this idea.  I just love our cute little outhouse.  It's about 30" tall and 15" square.  We dig a hole in the yard with a post hole digger, about a foot in diameter and 20-24" deep, then set the outhouse over the hole. 

This bamboo compost bin sits on the kitchen counter, next to the sink.  All kitchen scraps go into it, plus coffee grinds, and shrimp peels.  For a while I had a glass jar sitting there, but it really looked disgusting, so this bamboo container is a big improvement.

Here  you see there are eggshells and vegetable scraps.  Even biodegradable coffee filters along with the coffee grinds go into my compost bin.  

The lid of the outhouse comes completely off, or I can slide it upward and forward and just dump the scraps down the back side.  Every few days we add a little bit of soil to the compost and hose it down.  The organic material that we put into the outhouse, slowly leaches out into the soil and enriches everything around it. When the pile has risen to ground level, we dig a new hole.  Depending if the hole was dug in one of the gardens or in a grassy part of the yard, we put the grass that we dug out from the new hole on the soil that was placed on top of the old hole, and we are good to go.  Our ground is filled with gazillions of earthworms.  They get a square meal on a regular basis.
It really is the best energy star appliance for your kitchen.