A Compost Bin That Costs $0.00
Let it all rot. That’s the point.
Last year I bought a climate refuge.
A wooded acre in New York’s Adirondack Mountains 5 hours due north from New York City. And now, what to do with it? Some readers of my last column suggested that I should do nothing at all. Just leave it be for the animals and native plants. And that’s definitely on my mind. One of many dreams for this acre.
And yet, one dreams of a refuge, a retreat. Some place in harmony with the land that, at the same time, is a home. Are these two ideals incompatible? I’m not sure yet. That’s what I’m hoping to learn in the course of the next few years.
Yes, there’s a risk of critters getting in. Yes, it looks a bit like something from The Blair Witch Project. But really. It’s brilliant.
As a compromise beginning, recently I put up my first structure made entirely from what I could find on the land. I first came across this particular structure a number of years ago while researching an article about Helen and Scott Nearing, a couple that went “back-to-the-land” in the 1930s and stayed there a long time. Scott lived to 100 first on their Vermont and then their Maine homestead. Helen lived to 91. They ate raw vegetables…
