As The Crow Flies

This is my composting toilet. I use it, throw the paper in it, and cover with sawdust. When it is full, I dump in under a big pine tree and cover with pine needles. If the pine needles are covered with snow, I cover it with snow. If I have some grey water saved I rinse out the bucket and throw the water on the pile. There isn’t any smell. The toilet usually sits out on my porch but it is very cold now(-6 F -21C) and snowy so I moved it inside.

I’m thinking about building a small addition on to my cabin so it could be kept in it its own room. It a very simple system that I learned from reading the book The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure.  Now Free and downloadable at:http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

You don’t have to use sawdust you can use what ever you have, dirt, bark, duff, what ever. For material to cover it outside, the idea is to have something fluffy that allows a lot of air to get to it so that it can heat up, kill any bad stuff, and compost fast. In the book he recommends straw. I use pine needles because that’s what I have. But you could use leaves or weeds or what ever. My bucket is called a Luggable Loo;a five gallon bucket with a toilet seat lid. In the book he builds a nicer looking system. You could just use a 5 gallon bucket with a regular lid.

The warmest it got today was 2F (-17C) degrees. The sun isn’t even down and it’s already in the minus. I snow shoed down to my mailbox, 2.5 miles(4km) away. It was 2 F(-17C) degrees and the wind was blowing some of the time. I didn’t feel that cold but now that I’m back I feel chilled to the bone. Times like these I really miss having a bathtub.

Most days I walk down to my mailbox to retrieve or send a movie from Netflix. Some days I walk down to mail a movie in the morning and again in the afternoon to receive a movie. On those days I get 10 miles(16km) in. It’s my getting fit by watching movies plan.