Chicken wire compost bin set up with minimal injury!

Because the worms just can't keep up, I have set up a normal compost bin, too. I was hoping to buy a nice rotating one. Then I checked out prices. Wow! It just seems nutty to spend >$100 on a composting bin. That's hardly crunchy, right? And the only compost bin Home Depot had in stock was a $300 cedar number. Ugh!

However, Home Depot did have chicken wire -- and lots of it. They must have had a dozen different varieties! I scratched myself pretty badly checking them out. I guess I should have remembered that chicken wire is in essence mildly barbed wire. In any case, I found what I was looking for in a 3' by 10' affair. It came tied up in wire that I reused as wire ties.

So I have finished building my own bin using these materials. I found about six sets of directions online, all of them remarkably similar. Here is an example: http://www.urbanfoodgarden.org/main/composting/composting---wire-compost-bins.htm.

And here is a picture of the finished product! I am quite pleased with it. I put some dirt at the bottom (including a nice fat earthworm), some food scraps, and some of the grass that has overgrown my front beds.