Lightning and rainbows and life without furnature

Even the 'bad weather' on the island is wonderful so far. When it rains, it seems like it doesn't mean it. It seems like it is apologetic as it briefly waters your garden for you before returning to sunny weather as soon as possible. Even as one part of the sky rains, the sun still comes through from other places. It's not the same as the rain that comes in Juneau and looks like it has taken up permanent residency - which it has; or more like it may have had a brief laps but is now ready to make up for any lost time.

This morning we woke up and made our first order of fall seeds from the Seed Savers catalog before heading up to Oak Harbor for some errands and time with Tim's dad, Joe. We now are proud owners of a brand new microwave, we have our freezer back from Joe's boat, Tim fixed the squealing fuel pump on the truck, we saw a man about our muffler, and I started staking out and hauling driftwood for my compost bins.

I am constructing a three-bin composting system which means I will have 3 bins, each 3-foot cubes, in a row. The first month I add "browns" and "greens" to the first bin until it's full. By then, the compost should be getting hot and breaking down and be ready to rotate so I will move all the compost from the first bin into the middle bin which stirs the stuff as well as moving it down the line towards ready soil so I can continue filling the first bin with new food scraps, weeds and leaves. After two months, it will again be time to stir all the compost by moving the contents of bin #2 to bin #3, then bin #1 to bin #2... after three months of composing and shuffling down the line, everything should be broken down enough to fertilize the garden. Also, fully composted fertilizing goodness takes up much less space than freshly chopped green and brown matter; thus if I don't use up all the finished compost right away, there will probably be enough room in the system to store soil a little longer. Gardening is a seasonal thing and not every month creates the same amount of compost or uses the same amount of fertilizer.

Anyways, when my beautiful driftwood and rebar structure is finished and filled with what comes out of the chicken coop, I will include some pictures. Until then, we are still loving our new life and delighted to be farmers.