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Mission accomplished: our first Critter-Proof builder is now making compost

Dan Egan with the Critter-Proof Composter he built for YMCA Camp Mason in New Jersey

We’ve reached a milestone. The first composter to be built from the instruction manual is done, and it’s looking good.

Dan Egan is the first of our testers to complete a Critter-Proof Composter. Dan is the naturalist at Camp Mason, a YMCA camp in western New Jersey.

When we sent out a call for testers, he responded, writing,

We have school children spend overnight school trips weekly and on weekends on our 600 acres bordering the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Black bears are the largest problem with compost in NJ. We are trying to establish a composting program to reduce waste and are very interested in testing your manual to build a Critter-Proof Composter.

That was back in late March. A slow, wet spring intervened, along with the programs and other work at the Camp.

Dan sent photos along the way (you can see his rock pile and forms here), caught some inconsistencies in the text, and showed us a few places where the instructions needed more detail.

And now  it’s done. Here’s Dan’s report:

So we are making compost!

On Tuesday we mortared the stone faces, built the aeration screen and attached the doors. Right away we began our compost program of collecting proper food waste from the camp’s guests to put in the composter.

Thank you for including YMCA Camp Mason in the testing of the Critter Proof Compost. It has been wonderful building something that works with the Earth, looks great and will be around for a long time. I thought the manual was great and you have my feedback from the bits and pieces that were confusing or contradicting to the photo instructions.

Speaking for myself, someone taking on this project with little carpentry OR concrete experience, I had a great time learning more, especially from minor mistakes here and there.

I plan on borrowing the forms we made for the camp composter and building one this summer in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York on my family’s lake which will be even better.

One thing I noticed when I was building and cutting the doors was that I had bought aluminum too thin (the only sheeting at Home Depot) so sometime next week I will look to buy some new 1/8″ aluminum to replace the doors.

Other than that I think the compost will work great and I’m already looking forward to building a second one better than the first.

We couldn’t ask for a better result.

Dan’s thoughtful suggestions will be incorporated into the last draft of the manual, which we hope to have available by the end of the month, if not sooner.

To make sure you hear as soon as the instruction manual is ready, be sure to join our mailing list. Just fill in your first name and email address in the green box in the upper right hand corner.  We respect your privacy and will never sell, share or trade our email list.

learn more about critter-proof composting

If you care about the environment and want to compost, the real problems come on four legs, in small, medium and large sizes: rats, raccoons and black bears.
The Critter-Proof Composter is made using concrete formwork, faced with stone, with recessed bolts holding aluminum lid, front door and back vent in place. As unique as it looks, this design uses proven methods for producing compost

dan egan, new jersey

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I thought the manual was great.
It has been wonderful building something that works with the Earth, looks great and will be around for a long time.
As someone taking on this project with little carpentry OR concrete experience, I had a great time learning more, especially from minor mistakes here and there.
I plan on borrowing the forms we made for the camp composter and building one this summer in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York on my family’s lake, which will be even better.

marylou and david, powell river

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We have a vegetable garden, and the compost for that is by the garden. But we wanted something to take care of our kitchen wastes. We put everything in there.
We’ve been using it for more than a year, and it’s amazing. It never seems to get filled up. It’s always working.
I took a couple of wheelbarrow loads out in February, when I was top dressing, and I was really pleased with what I got. It was rich and black and not stinky.

jason, wildwood, b.c.

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We get a lot of bears, six or seven last year, because there are hazelnut trees in the yard.
We use the composter all the time, and we put everything in it. Then we cover whatever we put in with dirt, to help it out.
I love that you can put such a wide range of foodstuffs in it, and the critters don’t get at it.

diana woods, powell river

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I have a large garden and a lot of composters. This one is not only safe for kitchen wastes, it produces the best compost of all. I think it’s because the stone keeps it at a steady temperature, and in hot weather, it doesn’t dry out around the edges like a plastic bin.

jan lovewell, lund, b.c.

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We had a terrible problem with bears and raccoons, with multiple incidents of bears tearing the garbage apart even though we washed out anything that could possibly smell of food.
We didn’t dare compost, even fruit and vegetable wastes.
Now we compost almost everything.
I’ve turned it once with an aerator. The compost is great, and there’s plenty of capacity.