The Dump

I went to the transfer station yesterday. (I'm trying to wean myself off of the term "the dump", so my grandchildren someday don't say, "Oh, Grandpa, you're so old fashioned. There haven't been dumps for years!") They have a recycling building, a place to dump your non-recyclable trash, and a "yard waste" area. This is where people may dump their leaves, tree clippings and other biodegradable landscaping detritus. The large piles are periodically turned with a backhoe or grader, and when a pile is pretty fully decomposed, it's moved to another area. Townspeople are welcome to come and shovel it into their car, truck or trailer and take it home. This is the nice "black gold" gardeners refer to: fully composted material that add nutrients and goodness to garden or lawn soil. The problem is that some people seem to think that "yard waste" refers to plastic bags, bits of tires, cutoff pieces of lumber, synthetic rope cutoffs from nursery plants, etc. There are also good-sized sticks which actually qualify as yard waste, but they're too big to decompose quickly, so they have to be picked out when using the compost for most projects.

In the past, I'd shovel the stuff into my vehicle, pick out a few of the bigger sticks and non biodegradable stuff as I was loading, and sift everything else when I got home. There'd be a big pile of sticks, rocks and things to throw into the woods after I pulled out and threw away the bottle caps, plastic tags, spare metal parts and pressure treated wood pieces I'd found. But a few years ago, I'd seen a guy with a big wooden frame mounted at about a 45 degree angle on the back of his trailer, with chicken wire across the opening. He'd throw the compost against the chicken wire, the good stuff would go through into the back of the trailer, and most of the bad stuff would roll down the screen onto the ground.

So, on my trip yesterday, I brought along a large tarp and some green plastic fencing. I spread the tarp into the back of my Prius (it's times like this that I miss my old truck) so it looked like a big open bag in the rear of the car, tucking the upper corners of the tarp into the rear door openings. I then stretched the fencing across the back, tucked the corners of that into the doorways, and closed the doors. This held up the top of the "bag" and created a semi-rigid sieve for the compost. The fencing and tarp were plastic, so there was no worry about scratching the paint on the car.

I then began to throw shovelfuls of compost at the fencing, and, sure enough, the good stuff went through, and the bad stuff stayed on the surface. Some fell to the ground, but after a few shovelfuls, the fencing would collapse onto the sifted pile and I'd have to lift it and shake off the debris, but that was no problem. In about five minutes, I'd filled the back of the car with sifted, trash-free compost! It worked so well, I think I'll build a frame for the fencing, so the bad stuff rolls off like that trailer setup I saw years ago.

As I walked around the passenger side, preparing to leave, I saw that I had put a long set of scratches on that side of the car when I backed in! There was a wooden "table" sitting there. I had noticed it when I looked in my rearview mirror on that side, but once it looked like I'd avoid it, I had backed in the rest of the way and did the damage. The crunching of the compost as I backed over it had masked the sound of the scraping.

I drove home, alternately pleased with how well my sifting had gone and despondent at the thought that I might need to have the car repainted. So much for free compost! As soon as I got home and had dumped the compost, I drove into the garage, found a bottle of rubbing compound, which is made for removing scratches from car finishes, and began rubbing. It took about five minutes of easy work, and the scratches disappeared completely! Happiness returned!

Now I can look out back at the pile waiting to be mixed into my gardens and smile. Next time, I'll back up more carefully, and be even happier. I may even get a trailer and hitch, because now I'm really fired up about getting more compost.

Does it say something bad about me that I get excited about decomposed plant matter?