As Nick found out when researching for his TEDx Canberra talk on how to save the world with humanure, it’s hard to find good pictures of poo. You may not believe it, but not many folks draw poo very well. Nor the nutrient cycles they interface with. Enter arts collective Cloacina!
Am I the only one who gets excited about beautiful posters of composting toilet systems? Surely not. But then, I get excited about any regenerative system that’s described really well in an evocative way. Particularly in a visual way. With watercolours.
Perhaps you can tell at a glance why I am so excited by this photo? I’ll tell you. We have a humanure compost toilet system built on wheelie bins. We love it. But the place we want to use the finished, composted humanure is over the hill from the toilet block.
At the moment, we’re loading full wheelie bins of humanure onto the back of the Milkwood truck and shipping it over the hill. It works as a system, but it isn’t ideal. Maybe these wheelie bin trailers will hold the answer! Read More »
Recently Nick gave a talk at TEDx Canberra. He talked about stewarding nutrients, how we can solve the problem of peak phosphorous, and about how to grow the best cumquats ever.
Yes, Nick was talking about why taking responsibility for our poo and our wee, our most basic waste streams, is so crucial to our future. For a long time, a mark of superiority in some cultures has been how far you can get your shit away from you. But now, we need it back. Read More »
Wendell Berry once said if you eat, you’re involved. He was talking about agriculture, but if you ask me, he really meant humanure. Getting your outputs sorted is a big and necessary task. For us, that meant designing and implementing a composting toilet system based on wheelie bins.
I thought I’d better give out the details of our compost toilet bin system, as we’re receiving many emails asking for the specifics of how the system fits together. It’s a simple design, but one that we’re very happy with. Here’s how the bins work: Read More »
Now tell me this is not the prettiest compost toilet block you have ever seen. Go on. I dare you.
The issue of poo at Milkwood has been a long-standing source of discussion. We know that when poo is processed into humanure it contains valuable nutrients that would greatly help establish aspects of our farm. We know it can be processed effectively and safely by simple means, especially on a small scale. And we’ve been doing just that, ever since we arrived.
But what do you do once you’ve got 120 people descending on your farm for 2 days for a workshop with Joel Salatin? There was no way our small domestic humanure system was going to be able to cope! Read More »
