Russ Lanoie: Woodstove vs. Composting

It occurred to me recently that there are startling similarities between our woodstove and our less common drum composter, the device that is used to reduce fruit and vegetable waste from the kitchen or yard back into its elements. Having heated with wood for over 50 years and remembering my dad’s “humus bed” from years before, I’ve come to understand the basic principles of both, though here I’ll choose to focus on the modern drum or tumbling composter that has evolved from dad’s humus bed or compost pile, since most readers already understand the function of a woodstove.

Both devices are fed natural materials that are sometimes grown right in the users’ backyards but with very different, though somewhat overlapping, goals. The primary goal of the woodstove is to generate heat, though its byproduct can be used as a fertilizer or soil “amendment,” while the primary use of the composter is to turn food waste into an end product similar to the soil that the food was grown in. Each device can reduce the materials put into it down to a fraction of their original volume. I’ve come to respect our drum composter as I keep adding food scraps and some yard waste, only to have it almost magically disappear, especially if I keep rotating it when adding stuff.