Compost production is at the heart of our regenerative practices and having a proper space to produce it seemed an important milestone in our journey.
It all started from the wish to professionalize our compost production. At the beginning, we were making our compost outside, having to protect our piles from sun, wind, and rain.
A fully covered area would give us the benefit of working in the shade and protect our fresh piles and the finished product from too much heat, wind or humidity. All of which contributes to a better product in the end: a rich, dark compost, that is full with microbial life.
So, the task at hand was to construct a spacious, covered area that would allow us to have more control over the entire process while making our lives a bit easier at the same time.
We always try to design our systems with a permaculture approach – each element performs many functions. Thus, the new building should not only help us to produce compost, protect us and the compost from the elements but should also integrate in the existing systems. That’s why the “relative location” of each element is crucial.
By placing it right next to (and one terrace level up from) the main garden, we can choose to gravity-feed our veggie garden by connecting the liquid compost tank to the irrigation system. This way, we save ourselves a lot of time and effort.
Future plans involve adding animal stables right next to the compost area, which is another example of a “relative location“. The need for fresh manure in our compost production makes the placement of animal stables right next to it a smart choice.
The building process
After having found the right location, we started out with a rough sketch, some measuring, and the help of many volunteers. We had to select the right logs for the pillars, shave the bark off of them and bury them 1m deep in the compacted clay soil.
Now that the pillars were in place, we started to connect them with horizontal crossbeams. On top of these connectors, we had to fix other logs using simple joinery. Even though it was basic woodworking, the irregularity of roundwood has got its challenges. Nevertheless, we were determined to spend as little money as possible (as opposed to buying more processed – meaning square – pillars and beams) and we simply love the “rinky-dinky”-style of building with roundwood.
As soon as the main structure was up, we could cover the roof. We decided on rough boards from locally sourced Douglas firs.
To protect the roof from rain, we used overlapping rows of tar paper. We heated the tar paper at the edge where the rows overlap in order to glue them together properly.
Finally, it was time to take care of the work area itself. After some debating whether to use cement or not, we’ve decided to pour a cement floor for half of the building.
We wanted a flat and clean workspace for storing the finished compost and more importantly, placing the brewing tank for our liquid compost production.
We boarded up the walls on the two “wheater sides”, to protect from winds and precipitation from north and west. Leaving enough space on top of every wall would grant us enough natural light and also lessen the wind pressure on the structure.
All we had to do now was installing water and power lines and build a wooden platform to carry our 600lt tank. We’ve also included a ladder and service platform on top of it to be able to easily access and clean the residues inside the tank after each brewing process.
We’ve already used it many times and it works perfectly!
The elevated platform provides some altitude to empty the tank without any pump or power, simply using gravity.
In the future, we’re planning to install a wind turbine and batteries to hopefully generate enough electricity for the air pumps, which are needed to produce a high-quality liquid compost (tea & extracts).
Another future project is to harvest the rain water from the roof to further minimize the environmental impact in our compost production.
Surely, we’ll be looking for the best possible “relative location” of the rainwater catchment system to ensure that it’ll be also adhering to the permaculture principle of “each element performs many functions”.
For now, we’re super thrilled to be able to work efficiently and produce one of our main assets, a dark, rich, microbially active compost in larger quantities.
This will speed up the regeneration process of all the parts of our land, be it the olive groves, the food forest, or our veggie gardens.
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