That’s right you tea party fucks. I love the government. How you do like them apples? Between funding my job, making it possible for me to buy a house, and all the energy efficient rebates and help I have gotten through the city and Obama I couldn’t be happier with paying taxes right now. No more slum lord for me! I got a rebate yesterday for my new composter. The city of Austin deal is that if you take a class on composting, buy an approved unit, and switch to a smaller trash can you get a 75 dollar rebate on a composter. When I saw the ecomposter for sale on Woot for a hundred bucks I (figuratively) jumped on it… also because it really reminds me of the death star.
The best part about the ecomposter is that you can roll it around in any direction on its base which for some reason is really fun so we do it all the time. Also you can put stuff in from the top or the bottom so if you have a bunch of junk in your hands you it is very accessible. Then you can easily roll it off the base and push it around to where you need it. I learned in the class that the best thing you can do for your lawn is add a layer of compost to it which is really easy to do when you are just kicking the big ball around.
There was a downside, though, it came in a million little pieces and took about 7 hours to put together. 
Somehow I avoided this chore (have I mentioned I can be kind of lazy?) and Mr. Smurf put the whole thing together by himself while I rested.
I got the rebate yesterday and the whole thing ended up costing 20 bucks. Hooray for composting!
If anyone has any tips for me on composting (its all new to me!) let me know!
Lazy Smurf's Guide 
1. It might smell like shit from time to time. I believe this is okay.
2. We try to keep our dog from licking the compost bin or the gross juice it occasionally leaks, because then she smells like shit.
3. You will most likely get little maggots–they are black soldier fly larvae. Don’t worry about them; they’re harmless.
4. Big Death Star compost ball for the win!
That thing looks amazing.
Composting is really hard to screw up, and perfect for us lazy people. You can get really into it and balance brown and green materials and water it and stir it a lot. Or you can just throw things in a pile and forget about it.
The one thing I’ve really learned is not to compost anything with thorns. Everything will break down except for the thorns, and then you find yourself stepping on thorns all the time.
Thanks ladies for the tips! I keep forgetting to water it and I don’t think we have enough brown but I think all the leaves should help even things out.
Miss Willow got under it yesterday, hopefully it won’t become a habit!
wow. that is one killer looking composter. and, it’s so hard to tell from the first pic how huge it is! what a great deal!
I forgot to mention: If you are like us, you’ll probably keep your food scraps on the counter in a big bowl or covered crock until it gets too full and you can no longer delay chucking the scraps in the compost bin. We recently got way too lazy about emptying it on time, and we are now overrun with fruit flies. Seriously, I don’t know where all those little bastards came from, but they’re even in the bathroom. I bow to my new fruit fly overlords.
sweet awesomeness! yay for the government (i love it, too!) and yay for one fantastical Death Star composter! w00t!
my composting tips:
1. 1 part green: 2 (or 3!) parts brown (green = veggie scraps, brown = bits o’ paper, leaves, tissues, etc.)
2. you can compost a lot of stuff besides just food scraps – we compost: tissues, fingernail clippings, dryer link, hair from hairbrushes, the crap our vacuum sucks up around the house (just dump the dyson contents in our compost pile), the compressed paper hot bar containers from whole foods, paper q-tips, paper plates we save from people’s parties (yeah, we’re kind nutty like that), etc.
It definitely looks like a death star. That’s too funny.
Shannon- so far we have been to lazy to get a big bowl and have just been walking out there after dinner, I am hoping to keep this up because I know I would never want to clean out that bowl! We were overrun with fruit flies a few weeks ago and then just as quickly as they came they were gone again.
Jessy- Thanks for mentioning all that other stuff! I hadn’t even thought about hair that makes a lot of sense. We have a LOT of dog hair that should go into the compost.
That Death Star Composter is SMURFTASTIC!!! I read a little bit about composting last year, but since I only have a tiny balcony, I kind of lost interest…some day, when I have a yard, I want one just like yours! And that’s AWESOME about what the city of Austin does–every day I learn another tidbit that makes me so freaking excited to move there!!!
xoxo,
LJ
Awesome- that is soooo cool. I want one! I want a rebate! I love the government too!
Woot! I am a bit in love with this death star composter! And you guys having that rebate program–my conservative city needs to get on that!
That thing is the coolest!
Help! I too have the deathstar, and loved how it looks of course but am having trouble making it WORK. It got so heavy so quickly (and when only partially full even), I can’t roll the thing on its stand. Nothing seems to be breaking down very well. I know I have erred in these ways: I never cut anything into smaller pieces, there’s a lot of heavy stuff like avocado pits in there and I’m bad about adding “brown” matter. So, it’s all me? No one else has these issues?
Another pickle: if I keep adding stuff all the time, it will never have time to fully cook in there since I’m always adding new stuff. Should I give this thing a break over the winter and let it be? Then what to do with my scraps?
Oh so many questions from a Clueless Composting Newbie…
Krista I am so new to it too but we haven’t had a problem with it not rolling. Maybe take it off the stand and just roll it around the yard. Things started to break down a lot quicker once we started watering a lot more. I do think you should give it a break so that it will cook but keep rolling it because according to the site that is supposed to make it go a lot quicker and adding dead leaves will help your brown aspect a lot and those decompose really quick.