Hammers in hand

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by Maia Hansen

It’s been such a gorgeous fall. By mid-week we all needed a break from the office, so on Wednesday afternoon; Tyler, Jess, Nate and I went to Lowell Village School to work on their compost shed.  Last spring, Lowell School started building a shed to house hot-compost bins that will be used to process the school’s food scraps. The unfinished shed has been sitting idle this fall. We decided its completion is past due!

building a compost shed I recruited my handy-man boyfriend and the five of us met up with Karina, from Green Mountain Farm to School and Nick, a local carpenter who has been working on the project from the get go and helped to create the plans.

Hammers in hand, the seven of us began building the insulated bins. We composters are pretty capable, but it made all the difference to have a couple of carpenters on the team.

The sky was on the ominous side, the wind whipping in all directions “It’s coming,” Jess kept saying, but Tyler kept countering, “There it goes.”

No storm hit us after all. It’s a good thing, too, because the nearly finished shed still needs a roof! After covering the insulation with panels and protecting it from the weather, we called it a day. Karina was leading an afterschool program, so she brought the kids over to see the shed and we talked compost. I was impressed with how much the students knew about the recipe needed to build a compost pile.

We planned another workday for the following week, and before we know it the shed will be done and we’ll be ready to do school-wide trainings. Finally, all of those wasted food scraps at lunchtime will be recycled back into the school garden!