I can’t remember when or why we started composting. I believe it was around the time we started gardening in our backyard. We actually started with vermicomposting, with worms. We bought tupper totes and drilled the appropriate holes in them, ordered a pound of red worms from a place in Texas, added a bunch of shredded paper and a few vegetable peelings and we were ready to go.

But with a growing family we were producing much more food waste then the worms could keep up with. We had been giving our meat scraps and spilled messes to the dog for a while already. However, once you wrap your mind around the idea of composting it is actually really hard the throw food scraps away. So we set up our own compost pile in the backyard.

I love grapefruit (and so do the kids). Each year we order several boxes from our local church school. These produce a lot of waste with the grapefruit peals. Last winter we successfully composted all those peelings and a host of other things and added them to our garden before starting the winter pile again.

My favorite way to compost though is through the chickens. They love veggies scraps but their favorite is apple cores. Luckily we eat a lot of apples. This now is a well known fact in our family that apple cores are shared with the chickens, no matter where we are. This weekend we attended a class on marketing for farmers. There were apples there as a snack. The kids and I each had one then I put the apple cores in my purse to take home  for the chickens. Not something I pictured myself doing when I was in high school I assure you.

Last summer we were going camping. My brother-in-law and his friend Henry were riding with us. Henry ate an apple then threw the core out the window before any of us could stop him. Avril looked at him with indignation in her eyes and said, “Hey our chickens like apple cores.” He quickly apologized and said he would save them next time and he did.