Dirt

Doesn't it seem silly to pay for some things? I understand an initial investment but after that I don't want to shell out good hard earned cash for stuff I can grow, create or generate. I'm not a fanatic in any sense; I don't have my toaster hooked up to my bicycle and we don't have solar panels on our roof (not that I'm opposed to that). We run our ceiling fans way more than our A/C, turn off lights, grow some of our food and refill our giant 5 gallon water jug at Smart and Final for .25 cents a gallon. So all that still cost us something. However nothing irks me more than paying $ for dirt. Gardens require dirt, lots of it and I hate buying it. So we don't.

Prince Charming made me a composter. I did some reading and some research and told him what I wanted with a little sketch. Off to The Home Depot where we plunked down about $75 for the parts. Not cheap but you gotta see this baby. It's a heavy duty trash can suspended in a frame that allows the whole thing to rotate top to bottom. We put yard clippings in it and vegetable/fruit scraps and egg shells and lots of other stuff. It gets rotated every couple days. Inside is deep dark rich soil (with some recognizable shells and newspaper strips today). I've noticed that my kitchen trash doesn't fill up nearly as fast. Typically I crack eggs on a napkin and instead of throwing the napkin and shells in the trash they go into the composter. Potato peels, carrot and strawberry tops, mushroom stems all morph into dirt for my garden. Now if I could figure out how to make gasoline for my car...