Composting...stinkiest job ever! haha

So today I worked with Brian Hengesbaugh of Theta Xi on composting. We started our epic journey at about 430. We hopped into the trunk of a tiny suburu and drove to the botanical gardens all the while bumping and smashing oour heads on the cars ceiling. We made it to the botanical gardens to collect dead leaves, "browns" that serves to prevent molding and the buildup of excess molding. In our compost we mix in 'greens" which are basically any wet organic matter, usually from the kitchen and "browns" which are dry organic matter such as dried leaves, etc. When we got there the botanical gardens were closing... :( But we were resourceful and collected the leaves on the side...Epic. Haha there were spiders and bugs and webs all in the leaves but we got down and dirty. After filling up to large garbage bags with the dried leaves we walked back to the house and got to work on the compost. Our site is basically a large pile enclosed on all four sides by wooden pallets. so we took out all the organic matter (OMG it smelled so bad, because it was beginning to rot) and mixed it with the browns we collected. Then we put it all back in, one smelly morsel at a time. In the decaying mass were beetles, baby maggots, earwigs, and even a black widow. did I mention how bad it smelled? We hadnt mixed it for about two weeks so it was rotting and smelled like the bowels of the earth had just relieved itself. Next week were going to have to turn it over and mix it again. Were also going to have to add warm water to aid in the process. We dont use worms because we cannot effectively control the temperature in our setup. Afterwards we ate dinner and swam. YAyyyy!

Epic journey today.