Back to Basics Living

Skyhorse's home for gardening, cooking, crafting, carpentry, and more

07 Oct 2011

Our New Arrival

Fall has arrived in southern Vermont … last night I went to bed wearing two sweaters, a hat, a scarf, and two pairs of socks. I drifted off to sleep while contemplating getting a third pair of socks to wear on my hands (there were no mittens handy). The “crisp” (to put it mildly) weather makes me even more excited that something besides fall has arrived in southern Vermont: our new composting toilet! Once it’s installed in the home office Tim’s building, I can put aside the dread of midnight treks over frost-bitten grass and look forward to settling into our cozy space. This may seem like an odd topic for a first blog post, but I’m genuinely excited about it. Here’s why:

1. Installing the composting toilet and getting Internet hooked up are the final two big things we need to do before the office is ready for use!

2. Opting for a composting toilet is a big step toward self-sufficiency. Until this summer, Tim and I were planning to install a traditional mound septic system designed for a three-bedroom home … and then we found out it would cost us about $30,000! Besides the cost, it would leave a big ugly mound in the middle of what we plan to make our fruit orchard. The composting unit that we purchased isn’t exactly cheap ($1,316.79, to be exact–this is with a drugstore.com 20% off coupon for first-time buyers), but in comparison, it’s a bargain. If we like it, we’ll use these for the main house when it’s built and be saving roughly $25,000.

3. The unit that we bought is self-contained, so maintenance should be very minimal.

If you’re ambitious and not racing the calendar to get a thousand things done before snow flies, you can make your own composting toilet! I won’t go into detail in this post, but it’s covered in my Homesteading book if you’re curious.

Happy Fall!