This electric, indoor compost unit comes from Korea. Photo Michael Levenston

The Red Dragon

You plug it in and hook up the exhaust pipe so that it vents outdoors. Then add a sawdust/enzyme mix and 2 litres of water to the machine. That’s it. You can add any food waste AND DOG WASTE to the mix and it will decompose the organic material.

That’s the promise. We are presently testing the machine at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden to see if it lives up to that promise.

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Sharon Lane with one of her three chickens in the coop atop her garage in Berkeley, Calif. “I’m discouraged but I’m determined to figure this out,” she said of her flock’s mystery ailments. Photo by Dean C.K. Cox

By Kim Severson
October 22, 2009
The New York Times

THE Bay Area is unmatched in its embrace of the urban backyard chicken trend. But raising chickens, which promises delicious, untainted eggs and instant membership in the local food movement, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Chickens, it turns out, have issues.

They get diseases with odd names, like pasty butt and the fowl plague. Rats and raccoons appear out of nowhere. Hens suddenly stop laying eggs or never produce them at all. Crowing roosters disturb neighbors.

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