A few more booths!

A week after my first booth, I had my second booth, again with the GroWW committee, in Edmund Haemmerle's backyard. This was the day of the Garden tour, so people were going to visit the Haemmerle's garden.

 Mr. and Mrs. Haemmerle have been composting for several years, and are master composters; in fact, they also compost meats and bones as well! On the day of the tour, they were kind  enough to let me use their compost to demonstrate how composting is done.
Working with The Haemmerle was a wonderful experience and I learnt a lot from them!

First Booth!

My first booth was the West Windsor Farmer's Market. I had this booth with the GroWW garden tour committee. GroWW committee have garden tours every year to promote the home owners that have a garden in their backyard. I worked with the GroWW committee last year on soil conservation as my journey award; this is why I decided to work with them again this year as well.
At my first booth, I had much progress; over 10 people signed up to start composting!

Preparations for The Booth!

Other than making the model bin, I had to make posters, a banner, hand outs, compost quiz, buy the kitchen composter, and survey individuals already composting. Preparing was probably the most tedious process in the project so far. Each week I had to make some changes to my posters or handouts based on the feedback that I collected.

Making The Model Bin

Finally after gathering all the materials, Heidi and I started working on the Model Bin. The pictures below show me working on the model bin!

Preparations for The Model Bin

Before the first booth, there were many preparations to be made. One of which was building the model bin. This was a very tedious process, unlike building the actual bin. I had to make little shipping pallets out of handy supplies. The pictures below illustrate some of the materials that we used to create the bin.

Introduction

I decided to work on my Gold Award this year on composting because it  truly captured my interest; as I always wanted my Gold Award to be nature related, this seemed to fit in perfectly. My Journey, which is the pre-requisite for the Gold Award, was on soil conservation. Ever since, I have wanted to pursue my Gold Award on topics related to that. Furthermore, I have always believed that we need to change our lifestyle, so as to reduce exploitation of the environment and the resources we consume. Composting ties in perfectly with my interests. Last October, while reading the newspaper, I read about composting in Princeton. The next day, I researched this topic and it got me really interested. For the next few months, I read more on composting and I came across the handy compost bin made out of shipping pallets. I emailed Heidi Fichtenbaum, my mentor, and got some information from her. This fascinated me and I knew I wanted to something like this for my community and the neighboring ones. I then sent out a proposal and two days after the approval, I had my first booth.