The Pile (and some mint)

Weather, family, and work all conspired to put us a little behind on chicken coop/run maintenance. So when we did get out there to do a massive clean out, it was a bit smelly! Our poor neighbors... We did notice an area that was getting wet that did not get wet before so it's a good thing we dove in when we did so we could fix that before it became an issue. We found a couple of beetles in the run. How on earth some beetles could live in there without being gobbled up is beyond me.

We emptied the coop into the run and then raked out the whole run and put all of that into the empty side of the compost bins nearly filling up the side. I put the thermometer in and it read 58F. Checked it again the next day, about 25 hours later and it read nearly 160F! That stuff is baking fast!

And that's a good thing because it smells. Still, I figure we'll have two completely full bins of finished compost in time for the spring garden. The winter garden is really slowing down, finally. We're feeding most of the stuff to the chickens who really love to do their part to help out by munching it all down.

One of the things we hope to do in the early spring is re-do the mint box. We have a 4ft x 7ft planter box in which we've been growing mint for a few years (Mojitos with home grown mint and limes!). This last year the stuff finally really started to get leggy and the tree above it kept dropping branches/leaf litter/etc. Finally we decided to just ignore it and hope it died out and then replace it this year.

Looks like we got our wish. More on that later, once we start actually doing stuff in the yard.