swaying daises sing a lazy song beneath the sun
Living on Kibbutz Ketura is almost like a forced detox from unhealthy eating and living habits. It requires a lot of effort to find unhealthy food, and as a very proud unhealthy eater, this has been quite an (enjoyable) shock to the system. I ration out my chocolate snacks, and things like ice cream become a treat you look forward to, not just the norm of a high energy pick me up. Our produce is, for the most part, local, and everything is as fresh as it can be. I’ve found myself wondering if I’ll be able, or interested, in keeping up this type of living once I return to the states. Here it is easier to grab a plum or an apricot for a snack than it is to find a cookie or a donut, but back home I know I will run into the dilemma of what is easiest, fastest and won’t go bad if I leave it under my bed for a week of midnight snacking. (hint: twizzlers won’t go bad, and cause little to no mess if left under a pillow. actual cherries do not fare so well.)
One thing that is very easy to do here is to be aware of what you are consuming and, in turn, throwing away… which brings us to the topic of todays entry:
COMPOSTING!
Composting is something that my family has dabbled in occasionally throughout the years, particularly in the days of nature camp when we would receive points based on the ecologically friendly habits we adopted at home. Our horses are also great composters, as they readily donate their used foods to enriching the fields. At the institute, composting is everywhere, and I’ve made it my goal to learn all that I can about this process. I even attended a lecture on compost toilets, learning that large amount
Ah, the Poop Classroom
of water is wasted in traditional plumbing for indoor toilets. Compost toilets present a fantastic solution to our ever increasing water crisis, well, once you get over the initial “ick” factor. Compost toilets are easily installed in family homes (or even in larger dorms or apartment buildings) with basically no smell (seriously), and a very infrequent need to empty out the collecting bins (I think we were told that a said a single family home would probably take at least a few years to fill their system).
Here, we have traditional toilets. I’m not going to lie, I think this is probably a good thing. There is only so much re-hauling one can do one their compost philosophy at a time, and even after using a compost toilet, seeing how the system works, and examining the end result (seriously, it smells and looks just like the dirt you’d find in your average every day forest), I think I will approach this new life style with a gradual increase in my own compost activities.
At AEIS, there are more compost opportunities than you can shake a stick at. There’s a small bin in the office kitchen for putting your food waste, and each caravan has a bucket on the kitchen counter for composting. The dining hall is equipped with a place for food waste after each meal, though I’m told that there are ebbs and flows on the use of compost, based on those running the kitchen. The rule of thumb for composting is that most organic things from your kitchen can be composted, with the exception of dairy products, fats in general and meats– things that are going to rot and might attract vermin. If you have fruit to compost, it should usually be cut in half, because large pieces of fruit take a long time to compost. Additionally, too much fruit should be avoided, because of the dreaded fruit flies. Here, we have an easy disposal system. When the buckets get full, you take your food waste out to the pile. It’s a dry compost, which means there are several steps you have to take, each of which involves some degree of playing in the dirt.
First, you take the large stick, and stir the compost. Then, you pour your food wastes onto the compost pile. Finally, you find some dry substances, usually dried date palm fronds, and cover the compost pile addition with the leafs. For composting activities not in the shade of a giant date orchard, dry materials can include a mixture of leafs and newspapers.
Like healthy eating, it’s easy to do here, requiring no extra thought. In fact, not composting is probably more difficult than composting. And, just like my new healthier eating habits, it’s going to be a struggle to figure out where things like composting fall into my busy graduate student life in the big(ish) city. I know from my many afternoons in various green product stores that they sell compost bins for apartments, and that there are several services that collect compost for use in community gardens or local farm schools. However, as an individual who finds ants and cockroaches among the scariest creatures on Earth… do I really want to tempt fate? Yet, can I really return back home and turn my back on everything I’ve learned here?
