Giving thanks, 2009

Thanksgiving 2009

Things for which I am thankful:

For all the years we had our Grandpa, the patriarch of the Gravatt Family. Robert Gravatt died January 15th, 2009 so this is our first Thanksgiving without him. Five of his children, most of his 20 grandchildren, and a bunch of great-grandchildren are gathered today and will remember him dearly.

Robert H. Gravatt, 1925-2009

For my extended family, gathered together in Kansas City, Kansas. Forty+ people and it is always the most pleasant time. As a whole they are amazingly functional. There are no fights, everyone truly appreciates each other, and we eat like royalty.

For the safe return of my cousin Joe from 10 month tour of duty in Iraq. Just in time for the holidays! He missed Grandpa's funeral, so we are super happy to have him back now.

Thank you for your service Joe!

For abundant and cheap, though not necessarily nutritious, food. It is great to be American, right?

For my roommate Kyle. He sets a good example of healthy eating (sometimes) and he humors me. And he built my compost bins! It's a good setup.

For our American university system, especially the graduate system. It is reportedly the best in the world and drives global education and innovation. I am glad to be participating in it. Go Hogs!

For Congress and the President. They have not achieved everything they could have and they have dropped the ball in some places, but they have done right by the American people in a few places. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, SCHIP expansion, an imperfect Stimulus bill (with the largest taxcut for average Americans ever), and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act are a few of them.

For the fall I got to see in Fayetteville. I missed two falls in row being in Florida and I was amazed that I had forgotten exactly how vivid and diverse the colors are in the Ozarks. A wet fall helped extend the fall foliage.

(photo credit: Susana O'Daniel)

For thousands of other things that I overlook everyday......

Compost bins

We finally have our much discussed compost bins. They sure aren't fancy, but they will do the job just fine.

This little project is almost a year in the making. I moved into Kyle's house about the first of January 2009. I immediately started dumping my kitchen scraps in the back corner of the yard. My compost pile was born! There wasn't a lot of leaves from the previous fall as they had been mowed into the grass, but I managed to get enough from nooks and crannies around the yard to make do. The compost pile started very small, and I learned along the way. WHAT? Carbon-nitrogen ration? You mean I have to have a proper balance of "brown" materials to "green" materials?

Okay, so I did a little reading. The leaves aren't just to cover the food scraps. It helps with proper decomposition. CHECK. My little pile wasn't going to start really cooking until the summer anyways since it was cold AND small. No worries. Did you know that composting your food scraps can help reduce your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? Organic material decomposes anaerobically in a landfill and creates methane (a WAY stronger GHG than CO2) and even landfill gas collection cannot capture even half of it. Aerobically decomposing in your pile will release some CO2 of course, but will return some of it to the soil and will cut out the methane. So even if you don't plan on growing a tomato plant or two in your compost, you should still compost. Even in your little suburban yard.

The great ice storm of 2009 left our trees in tatters. A few days of cutting in March left us with random logs piled in the center of the back yard. I thought they would work great for a little backstop or bin for my compost pile. Good idea Casey! Needless to say, they sat in the middle yard as quite the mowing hazard for the entire summer. Luckily they did not attract any snakes as I had feared.

The bins

A friend came over to help us rake leaves yesterday and it seemed like a good enough time to finally make the bins. FINALLY! And this year I will have plenty of leaves to balance my greens. It means I can even put some grass clippings in it this year.

See the little pile on the right? That is the total amount of compost created from January 1st through about August. It really started cooking in late summer. I don't know if it just reached the right ratio or if it was the temperature or what. But it went! About the time I started to see changes I got impatient and started dumping new material into a pile next to it so the original one could finish. Just one problem: I didn't have any browns! It just kind of sat there and looked like a nasty garbage dump for a while until I got some leaves.



So I have my little pile of compost and I don't have a place to put it. We don't have any beds of any type. I don't know where we might have one in the spring, so I guess this is just going to sit here over the winter. The new pile will be my focus now. My goal should be to have even more kitchen scraps this year to put into it. I can tell how healthy I am eating by how fast my little compost bucket under the sink fills up. Kyle and I have done a pretty good job about forcing vegetable and fruits into our diets and we tend to buy fresh ones as opposed to packaged or processed. We frequented the Fayetteville Farmer's Market, but we sure didn't buy much produce there. This fall we didn't eat nearly as much fresh produce as we should have, but that has started to turn around lately.

Thinking about getting started on your compost pile? Here is Fayetteville gardener Laura Kelly and her composting. Just think....it could be your New Year's resolution to keep nutrients out of the landfill and methane out of the atmosphere.