Since You Were Too Polite to Ask.

The time has come to reveal the dirty truth.

The truth behind our potty that is.

I've hinted at it in other blogs, but now I am going to come right out and tell you about it.

We have a saw-dust compost toilet.

You may have heard about composting toilets before. They are often large units that require two stories to set up properly. It turns and dries the contents without much assistance from you until months later at which time you empty it and the "stuff" has only a pleasant earthy smell. Of course such a device comes with a pretty price tag.

This is not the kind of composting toilet we have.

We have a five gallon pail. Eight pails actually, since there are four of us using it daily.

The Youngest has observed people as I've explained our "toilet situation". And she figured from some flickers of concern and possibly from some uncomfortable moves in their body language that I was leaving important information out when I stopped at "five gallon pail".  Don't worry, we do not have to perch precariously on the painful edge of a pail to do our business. No, the handy-man that is my husband built a lovely wooden box and we even splurged and bought a bamboo toilet seat for it.

I read about this system while living in Ontario.  If done properly it is the most environmentally friendly way of dealing with human waste.  The word "waste" should be reserved for things that are beyond use, that have little to no value left for anything. Poop is not waste.  It may gross many of you out to hear this, but for all it's stinky properties, there is still much good left in our poop. If handled with care and wisdom it can be recycled back into service to help things grow and thrive.

Ok, Have I lost some of you? (laughter)

I don't think I blogged about "the reason" why we up and left a good job and friends and family to come out here to try this crazy thing. It's too long to add here, but in a nut shell we want to become stewards of land, doing the best that we can at not taking more then we need and giving thought and care to growing our own food...and one of the things we felt would help us in this vision was to use a compost toilet.  When we looked at this house and the bathroom was a complete wreck, we added that to the list of reasons why this was a good house for us.  Had we bought something nicer, we would have been hesitant to remove a functioning flush toilet to replace with a pail. When the bathroom here was a "gutter" we were like "Bonus!"

When we arrived one of the first things Geoff built, was the box, fitted to the pickle pails we brought from The Man-Son's Penetang job at the "World Famous Dock Lunch".

We were all set. Almost.

We only needed saw-dust. That shouldn't be a problem, we live in a land of logging and saw-mills! But it seemed all the folks we talked too would shake their head and tell us that the mills they knew of where shut down. To be honest I began to panic a little. Here I thought this would be a good idea, all my research PROMISED that covering your "deposits" would leave virtually no smell and having a pail like such in the house was possible. I really wanted to give it a try! But if we couldn't find saw-dust we would have to invest thousands of dollars into getting a new septic tank (we are pretty sure the one that was here no longer exists and we aren't really sure where our shower water goes?) and besides we had our hearts set on being the "weirdest people" we knew.

Then we spoke to the right person. The East neighbour.

"Sawdust?! You want sawdust!!? My brother (West Neighbour) has a mill and the sawdust is getting out of hand over there, we were just trying to figure out what to do with it all!!"

And right there in the middle of all the weirdness that is me, and this crazy need I have to be WAY different then my culture, God assured my heart we were in the right place.

A mountain of sawdust is less then a two minute drive from the pail that needs it! Praise God!

And so 11.5 months later and we aren't sorry that we use 8 pails to deal with our "waste". It truly doesn't stink, most of the time. And the times it does, are no different than at your house when you chide a family member for the fumes coming out of the bathroom and start attacking the air with air freshener!  :)

So, this is how it goes.
A clean and empty pail goes in the box and a few scoops of sawdust are thrown over the bottom.
You make your "deposits" and cover them with sawdust from the old-feed bag that is standing near-by.  Now feed-bags aren't known for being beautiful, but I turn the writing toward the wall and it's not so bad. Once the pail gets full and sawdust is dangerously close to your behind (I refuse to blog about the time I decided that the pail could be used "just one more time" hahaha) you lift it out, carefully, snap the lid on and put a fresh pail in. Ta-da. Just like that!
It takes 1.5 days for four people to fill a five gallon bucket. But what goes in....must come out.....once a week Geoff and I empty them. He has built a large compost box just for our potty contents. He dumps (the pile is getting high and those pails are heavy), I hose out the pails (Summer is a bit easier, all winter I had to fill four milk jugs with water) we cover the new stuff with hay (that's why we were happy about the old bale left across the road), allow the clean pails to air-dry and Bob's your Uncle (he really is in my case!) you are ready for another week of "Number 1 and 2"!

"Does is smell bad when you are emptying them?"
Yeah, it's kinda gross. But not gag me gross and it only takes 20 minutes to do. Not the end of the world. It mostly just smells like there are animals in the barn. It is a farm after all.

To help with the composting process the pile should be hosed down occasionally. The goal is to get the temperatures up to or over 120 degrees.  If you can get it that hot, all the pathogens that are concerning in human (meat-eaters) poop are destroyed and it is safe to use in gardens. If you don't get it that hot, you need to either let it sit for a couple years, or only use it for fertilizing fruit trees or flower beds.  We didn't get it the right temperature , I'm thinking we didn't wet it enough this winter. We will either let it sit awhile longer or re-do it with more layers of hay and lots of water. The decaying process is what causes the temperatures to rise.

So far our guests have been quite gracious about using it. One of my day-care kids thinks it's really something, but when I watched her once at her home, she took special care to make sure I saw what a flush toilet was. Haha!!

I've mentioned a couple times when explaining how to use our unusual toilet to someone new.......

"Just be thankful that we are only asking you to use it and not empty it."

Which quickly helps them realize that things could be much, much worse.  :)

Well, I hadn't blogged in a long while so I thought I would give you a book today.
It has been a very busy summer with a lot of visitors and work. Not just work on the property or house, but actual paying work, for which we are thankful.  Maybe I'll share those details another day.

At least you know what to expect when you come to our house. We do realize it's not something that most people can do. But since we can we see it as our little part towards being kind to this earth God gave us for a home. I'm betting that you might think of us occasionally when you push down on your toilet's flush lever .....months later I still sometimes look for the phantom lever that isn't here.

Old habits are hard to break I guess!

When it graced our "guest room" while waiting for the bathroom to be finished.