Who says it doesn't pay to compost...a "lost and found" story...

 In the Compost Bin...

A couple of weeks ago, we had some fairly nice weather for the end of January.  I decided to take advantage and start filling up the raised beds in the garden.  Over the seasons, the compost in the beds settles and so you need to add more to the top of the bed so it is full to the top for the new plants and roots to grow this spring.  Now, I have to be honest, I never really even got around to putting the garden to bed last fall.  It was such a warm fall and all the plants were doing good.  Then, it finally got cold, really cold and I never got out to pull things up.  Therefore, I was pulling out old plants and then filling up the raised bed with chicken compost.  I dumped out one of the buckets and look what I found...

Okay...the compost that I was using was made from the chicken feathers and guts from chicken processing day in 2021!  That summer, my friend was helping with the eviscerating in the barn.  Eviscerating is a fancy word that means to pull the guts out of the chickens.  She was wearing her hubbies ring and it was a little loose on her finger.  We heard a "tink" and she knew immediately that the ring had slipped off her finger!  We thought it had hit the floor but there are huge cracks in the floorboards of the barn and rabbits have made tunnels under there and so that if it fell into one of the cracks it could be lost forever...

BUT as it turns out, the "tink" we heard was the ring falling into the gut bucket!  All the guts, feathers, and heads go into the pallet compost bin.  I took 4 pallets and tied them together to make a square.  This helps to keep the dogs from foraging in the scraps.  Also, when a chicken/duck dies, I "bury" them in this bin.  You can see it on the left in this pic...

The next summer, 2022, I took one pallet off and shoveled all the 2021 "stuff" that was inside the bin to the right of the bin (where the shovel is located in the pic above).  I had to move the old stuff out to make room for processing day 2022 stuff to go into the bin.  Then, in January 2023, I started shoveling the compost from 2021 to use in the garden.  

The ring went from the gut bucket...

to the compost bin...

to the pile beside the compost bin...

to the garden...

and then back to my friend!  

I keep thinking about all the times that this ring could have gotten lost in all that shuffle or even if it would have been on the bottom of the compost that came out of the bucket and I would have never even seen it!  What a blessing to find this ring and give it back to my friend!

My friends have been married for 23 years and are SO happy to have their original ring and symbol of their love back where it belongs!  Give your loved ones a hug!  Happy (early) Valentine's Day!

Have an eggcellent day!

Go Chiefs!

~Denise