Lindsay Morris

I walk barefoot in early spring and after my first round of chigger bites I start wearing taller socks (ankle-calf height) and fully enclosed shoes. It's a matter of exposure for me and I'm someone that bugs especially love to bite. Also, if you squat down alot, such as in the garden, if your inner leg/groin touches your ankles you'll get bites in those areas. I try to avoid having any grass touch my bare skin and that seems to help. If I get a lot of grass touching my skin then I try washing with soap and water as soon as I come inside. The BEST treatment for any bites is Bee Venom Cream. I buy this from a local woman who sells each year at the Baker Creek Seed Spring Festival. This stuff works immediately on any itchy bug bite I've ever had, it's incredible!

Just curious, did you buy the hose and has it worked?

Thank you for that excellent recommendation, funny coincidence, as I was reading your response my husband was doing just that!

I’ve never measured with a thermometer. It’s steaming when we open it, summer or winter, and it’s never frozen in the winter. We live in zone 6 and have cold winters.

We follow the humanure handbook which has lots of great information about all this. We incorporate our kitchen scraps at a significant amount and it is much more stinky than the humanure buckets. We don’t use other animal manures, but sometimes add some garden clippings. Straw is of course added per the handbook guidelines. We have made successful compost in the past. I’m hoping someone that has used the humanure system can shes some light on how the finished product looks for them. This compost has no odor, it is very light, it seems like the sawdust just isn’t breaking down. We use red and white oak sawdust and wondering if we need a different cover material.

Wheel barrow

We have been doing humanure for many years and we still aren’t certain of the quality of the compost. We just broke into a 1.5 year old pile and the compost is a brown, not black and looks pretty much like the sawdust we use to cover. It feels very dry. We cover with hardwood sawdust from a local saw mill and our piles always heat up. I’m curious what other’s experience with their humanure finished compost and how it should look.
In more recent piles I’ve been adding biochar and azomite every other time that we emptied our buckets and those piles look a little better.
The color of the compost is more accurately portrayed in the picture with the wheel barrow. The picture of it in my hand looks a little darker than it actually is.

Hi Rae,
My husband and I are looking for land in the Ozarks. We currently live in Kansas City. You can see my forum post here: https://permies.com/t/54579/ozarks/Neighbors#452048

Keep in touch and let us know where you settle down.
Best,
Lindsay