Compost Your Own Kitchen Scraps
There is no reason to scrape all the scraps, leftovers or rotted foods into the garbage can or disposal. If you have a garden you can make soil! It doesn’t have to be complicated, heated, turned or fussed over.
Really, you can just turn a corner of your growing area into a tiny composting bin.
It all starts with a bowl (or bucket) near the kitchen sink.
We call it:
The Chicken Bowl.
This stainless steel bowl sits beside my kitchen sink.
All of our leftovers, scraps, and food garbage goes into this bowl. I have tried some of the cute little compost containers that are sold in stores. The ones that look like Oscar The Grouch’s house and come with little baggies and a lid. They don’t work for me. When I want to scrape my scraps into a container I don’t want to fuss with a lid. When I take my scraps out to the compost bin, I don’t want to deal with little baggies. I don’t want to have to replace the little baggies. I don’t want to buy little baggies.
The bowl is perfect. No lids. No bags.
We take our little bowl of goodies out daily.
Before we had chickens, I would just dump it into the designated corner of the garden dedicated to compost.
Now that we have chickens, we don’t dump it into the garden corner anymore. We don’t even have a garden corner anymore for composting. We moved the composting area to the chicken yard. It is a beautiful arrangement.
- The chickens get to scratch, peck and select morsels they would like to snack on.
- They leave any unwanted scraps behind to biodegrade (like lemon peels and peach pits).
- As they fish through the scraps daily, they turn things, scratch things and keep my compost pile evolving.
- While sifting and snacking my chickens also add their own personal contribution to the compost pile in the form of manure.
It’s a win-win.
In addition to our kitchen scraps we add other organic materials to our little composting area often: garden scraps, cow manure, old straw, moldy hay, and many other substances. Anything that will break down into beautiful rich soil for the garden goes into the compost area.
We toss the contents of the chicken bowl onto the compost bin. The chickens eat whatever they want out of it & whatever they don’t want to eat will break down into beautiful soil.
The chickens love our compost bowl. If you are holding it they charge you. If you carry it around they will follow you. Some people have “bucket-broke” cows. We have “bowl-broke” chickens.
Sometimes my chicken bowl gets too full.
Like when I make salsa.
That’s when I have to go out for reinforcements.
And bring in a 5 gallon bucket. The chickens like these too.
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XO,
-Candi
