It’s always a good feeling when kids can grab hold of an idea, literally, in the hands-on sort of way.

Because we have a house in the country, and the fact that my mother-in-law is a grandchild-magnet, we are fortunate enough to enjoy spontaneous “cousin-invasions” upon our house on a regular basis. Last weekend, the latest handful (Grandma has 16, and counting…) arrived just in time to join us in some enthusiastic, hands-on learning. The project was our long-overdue compost compound.

It’s a simple thing. Nothing pretty, so I’ll put in a bit of landscaping around the edges. Maybe something bee and bird friendly… We built a stout fence line out of cheap or free materials, re-purposed for the task (everything deserves a second chance, right?). Against that, we piled up our various collections of cardboard and paper, garden and grass clippings, and horse manure from the neighbor, layering it all, lasagna style.

There are a lot of methods for compost out there, but I grew up with my father’s cold-compost setup, so we stayed with that to keep things simple and familiar.

As we transplanted our “ingredients”, the kids had a great time discovering vagrant earth worms. After the obligatory (but gentle) poking and giggling, the girls happily released the crawlers into their new home, promising to feed them well in the future.

Maria, the youngest, gave us a great chance to really point out the worth of our project to the kids. With a handful of paper scraps and a bewildered look on her face, she asked at one point, “But why are you keeping garbage!?”

What is garbage? In a natural environment, there is no such thing. Nature re-uses or recycles everything, and a compost pile is a perfect example of that. All by itself, the paper in Maria’s hands might have been garbage, but reunite it with some busy microorganisms and it becomes valuable plant food. Everything has worth. Always. For a sustainable society, we need to help “garbage” find its value again.

Our compost will need to “ripen” for awhile yet. As the kids come back for future visits, I hope they will return to the compound to watch the process and let the whole concept sink in even more.

Tags: eco-consciousness, Environment, sustainability

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 4:09 am and is filed under Environment, Social responsibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.