Ready for the New Season of Composting!

Today, I went in my backyard to collect fall leaves and found all my neighbors helping me! They all range from the ages of 3-8. It is nice to see that they care about the environment at such a young age! I am hoping they will be future 4-Her's of our club!

Booth at Farmer's Market -- August 31st

Today our Treasuring The Trash 4-H club had a booth at the farmers market, promoting both rain barrels and composting!
We got people interested in starting both of these methods of sustainability.

Composting in my Backyard -- Hands On!

I have been composting in my backyard for the past two years.

Since I don't have much soil and can't have a compost bin, I decided to make a bin out of an old garbage can. I drilled holes in the can for aeration and left it out on my patio.

My Compost Bin

I put food and yard waste every week and mixed it with a small pitch fork.
Because the compost was in a closed container without soil, I expected there to be no earthworms. Surprisingly, though, I found earthworms in my compost two days ago. I was very thrilled, and this proves that the process is in fact occurring.

Earthworms in my Compost Pile

Recently, I cleaned out last year's compost and started a new pile. During the process, I decided to take a few pictures of the stages of my compost.

1) New compost pile started last week

Stage 1

2) Last year's almost ready compost

Stage 2

3) The finished product!

Stage 3

Our Rain Barrel

Our cub sold our Rain Barrel at the Mercer County 4-H fair on August 4th!

There were several steps taken to make this barrel.

1. We sanded the rain barrel 
2. We drilled all the parts (the faucet, overflow etc). 
3. We decided to paint the rain barrel to attract people. We did an ocean theme and painted different types of sea animals. 

This is what our final product looked like:

Finished Product

4-H Mercer County Fair!

Today there was a fair held at the Howell Farm. This fair was a 4-H Mercer county fair where everyone from Mercer county brings his/her club activities to the fair and presents them. People bring different kinds of animals and do shows based on their training experiences. Then, awards are given out. Further, there are a lot of fun activities for kids to enjoy such as a magic shows, pony rides, creative artworks, learning about the tractors etc. Our club, Treasuring the Trash had our traditional composting booth as well as a rain barrel booth. We educated people about rain barrels with a slide-show print out and hand outs that Mrs. Rector gave to us.We also had our rain barrel for a silent auction and got pretty interesting bids!It's amazing to see how interested people are in conservation and sustainability.  We loved doing the silent auction and we will probably do it again next year. With the money that we earned, we will either donate it or use it for our cub fares.
This is a fun event because everyone in 4-H bonds and we learn a lot about each other. Everyone in 4-H is very diverse and has a lot to bring out.

Visited the Farmer's Market at Wisconsin

This summer I went to Minocqua, Wisconsin and I went to the Farmer's Market. I expected for there to be a lot of cheese; however, there was lesser cheese the Farmer's Market in West Windsor. It had other products such as honey and maple syrup. Further, it had different kinds of breads.
The Farmer's Market in West Windsor has more vegetables and meats.

4-H Healthy Living Workshop

Sustainability- Most people associate sustainability with the environment or material objects. What we fail to understand is that it should also be obtained within ourselves. As a result, this year I decided to attend a Healthy living workshop so I could be edified more about the sustainability of my body through eating and living healthy.
I attended a two day workshop where we learned about different ways of living healthy. The program was sponsored by Walmart and its goal was to educate kids of all different ages about the importance of healthy living and how it can be attained.
We attended this program and learned the New York curriculum for healthier living. Now that we are trained, we are supposed to educate others in our town and society about this program.
I enjoyed this program because I learned about the importance of having a healthy body and the easy steps we can take to attain fitness.

Rain Barrel

This year my 4-H club and I started decided to do something unique--we decided to learn about the importance of water conservation and ways we can actually conserve water. We came across a very helpful woman, Pat Rector who is a from the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. Pat came to one of our club meetings and spent time explaining the benefits of water conservation. She introduced us to the rain barrel. We learned all about rain barrels--how to build them, how to install them, where to buy them, how they are used, what they should and shouldn't be used for etc. We spent time learning and building our own rain barrel with Pat. This taught us the importance of preserving our resources and the easy steps people take and we CAN take to make a difference in the World.

Roasted Banana Peels Added to Soil

Why should we do this?

• It adds phosphorus and potassium which are both very good for plant health.
• For people who have composting restrictions or do not wish to compost, can still help save our landfills trash.
• It is easy and can be fun!

How to do this?

1. Place banana on a tray and put it in the oven.
   
   
   
   
   

   

   

   
   
2. Take the peels out and wait for them to dry.
3. 

   When they’re dry, cut them into smaller pieces and put in soil.
   
4. Use as fertilizer. Spread the banana peel around houseplants and garden plants. The cooked peels will fertilize the plants as they break down.
   
   You don't even have to waste your electricity by starting the oven. When baking cake or cooking some turkey on Thanksgiving, you can easily fit the tray of banana peels on the side and they will roast on their own. I used this method with my plants and it worked very well!

Khushi's 4-H Project

TREASURING THE TRASH 

Trying to treasure the trash sounds like a complicated job, but it isn't as hard as it seems. You can treasure many of the things you throw away daily and use them as everyday materials. Ever wonder  what to do with your old shirts besides donating them? Have you ever needed some reusable bags that you can use for grocery shopping or storage keeping? And don't want to pay five dollars or maybe even ten dollars buying them at a super market? Don't worry because I have the perfect idea for you. Make shirt bags!! It's that easy. No mess, no waste. And you won't even need to buy any supplies for this activity. All you will need is your old shirts, scissors, a needle and thread or tape, and any other decorating supplies you need to add your personal touch to the bag.

-Khushi  Nigam

Unqiue Ways of Composting!

For my 4-H presentation, I did some research and experiments on the unique ways of composting.

One of my topics was lemon in compost. I learned that lemon can be added to the compost and this helps the compost in that it manages the pH in the compost, gets ride of the color, and increases the speed of the composting. However, there has to be limited amount of lemon in the compost. There shouldn't be more than one lemon skin in one layer of compost (a layer is a proportion of food waste and yard waste from one week's collection).

Next, I researched the different things that can be added to the compost bin. I was surprised to learn that you can add unique things like almost all farm animals' manure, soy milk, and even urine. This was very intriguing and I hope in my compost I can start to add some more unique wastes!

My next topic was the comparison of plants with compost and plants without compost. I sowed marigold seeds in three different types of soils: regular, organic, and compost.
My observations:

• regular soil- very slow growth
• organic soil- all seeds did not germinate; growth was relatively faster than regular soil.
• compost - all seeds germinated as fast as organic soil, and the plant was healthier and taller.

EMK School Garden

Last year Nicole Auker, a parent volunteer at Ethel McKnight Elementary School in East Windsor NJ contacted me to do a composting project with her school. She was very welcoming and appreciative of my work and ideas. We sat together and brainstormed ideas as to how we could incorporate the composting project to teach kids ranging from grades pre-k to 5th grade.
We decided to have a 25 minute composting session per class and made a curriculum. In this session we first gave them a little lesson about the benefits and uses of composting--depth of the lesson depended on their grade level. Next, we did a composting experiment with them. We divided the classes into two groups: groups A and B. Both groups were planting some sort of plant--either basil, parsley, or cilantro. Group A filled their cups up with compost and normal soil. Group B filled their cups with only soil. Then, a month later the class saw the results of their plants.
We decided to do this so that the kids have a hands-on activity with composting and see the results themselves. Also, I wanted to try this because it was a different approach from the usual.
All in all, I loved this event because I learned a lot about all different kinds of learning styles of kids and it taught me a lot about how a lot of people are in fact impressed with composting.

Happy to promote Mercer County 4-H and Composting at 2013 NJ Agriculture Convention as the Mercer County Ambassador

Participating at the Agriculture Convention promoting Composting - http://www.mercerspace.com/news/4-h-ambassador-attends-convention/

Got unique opportunity to present benefits for sustainability at Youth Tedx Talk

On November 16th 2012, I was invited to give a Youth TedX talk at the Princeton library about my accomplishments with composting in the community. Kim Dorman and Janie Hermann were the two very helpful organizers who held the program and helped me present my TedX talk in a professional and elegant manner. I thank them! Below is a link to a video of my TedX talk!

Leadership Certificate and Saving Bond Given by Princeton Agriculture Association

In December, I was given a leadership certificate and saving bond by the Princeton Agricultural Association. I was invited for dinner with the Princeton Agricultural Association to receive an award for my club projects throughout the year.

http://mercer.njaes.rutgers.edu/4h/forum/NewsletterWinter2013.pdf

American Embassy magazine- American Youth: In on the Social Action » SPAN September/October 2012

Last year, Jane Malhotra, a freelance write for Span Magazine, published by the US Embassy in India contacted me about my activities on sustainability as she was writing an article on volunteerism in the United States.

A few months later she wrote an article about young Americans who spend many hours serving their community. My project was part of her article.  

The article: 

http://span.state.gov/sept-oct2012/eng/38-39-american-youth.html

Cherry Grove Farm Composting.

My next goal was to start composting in farms, so more of the community is involved. Further, people who live in condos and don't get to compost due to the restrictions can help the environment by donating their waste to the farm.
Here, the farm would collect the food waste and use its yard and animal waste and compost for the gardens in the farm; in case other people wanted to take the left-over compost.
I talked to the owner of Cherry Grove Farm, Mr Oliver, about setting up Community Composting at the arm and he graciously agreed.
Together, we were able to build a huge compost bin for the public, and the farm decided to advertise it on their website so people get awareness. At the same time, I informed neighbors and friends about this new program, and soon we had people going and putting their food waste into the compost bin.

I thank Cherry Grove Farm for allowing me to setup the bins for Community Composting at their farm - http://www.cherrygrovefarm.com/2012/08/community-composting-at-cherry-grove-farm/

Composting in Our Community!

My family and I first started composting in our backyard in October. We have really bad composting conditions in our backyard because we don't really have soil and we have a patio. As a result, when we first began, it was almost like indoor composting but it wasn't very efficient. Fortunately enough, a month or two later, our neighbor, Pooja Mehrotra, whose son, Raghav, is also part of the 4-H club, showed interest in composting and gave us the permission move the compost bin to her backyard. Our two families began composting together every week. Later, we found another family interested in composting; this family, the Nigams, daughter, Khushi Nigam, is also part of the 4-H club. Now, the three families compost together in the Mehrotra's backyard and we plan to meet every Sunday. Our goal, as a club, is to get more families involved in our little composting project, so we could preserve our environment on one step at a time, one person at a time; another family in our community is interested already!

Beyond My Gold Award!

After my the completion of the Gold Award, I decided that I did not want to drop the topic of composting just yet, so I started a 4-H club called, "Treasuring The Trash." As of now, we have three members in this club and our main focus to preserve the environment one step at a time, one person at a time. In this club, I figured "treasuring the trash" could be other stuff besides composting as well because people always have new ideas on what we can do with our trash to recycle it and ensure that it does not go to the landfills. Our club was started on November 18th, 2011 and we already competed on county level to do a presentation on our projects. I wish to continue being a 4-H member and sustaining the composting project beyond my High School years.

West Windsor Environmental Commission!

During my booths at the Farmers Market, I met Michael Hornsby from the Environmental Commission. We talked about the effects of composting and he invited me to attend one of their meetings. The meetings at the commission were really organized and they were very welcoming. We talked about Sustainable Jersey and how backyard composting could make West Windsor more sustainable. I attended a few of their meetings and took interest in their topics. While I was there, I met Rikki Massand, an editor for our local newspaper. Mr. Massand interviewed me and wrote a beautiful article  about my project in the newspaper! Being in the newspaper gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel as if I accomplished my goals of finishing my Gold Award and being a proud Girl Scout. Throughout this project, I learnt my strengths and weaknesses and a person and interacted with hundreds of people interest in the same field as me. I am glad I chose this project and went this far with it. Though my Gold Award requirements are done, I don't plan on stopping this project. I have carried this project to start a 4-H club called Treasuring The Trash! Recycling little things has become a part of my lifestyle and I will continue to do my part in preserving the Earth's beauty!