'nuther question for the poo-bucket (sawdust toilet) crowd.

Could you tell me where in the above threads anyone said they could not AFFORD regular toilets? I don't see it at all, and if you notice, some people here do have indoor plumbing and decide to still use a sawdust toilet.

Maybe they don't have extra water. Maybe they don't want the expense. Or just maybe, they don't see the purpose of polluting clean water that gets dumped into a septic tank or cess pool which has to be pumped out every so often. And maybe they just prefer to have the extra compost for whatever.

I have indoor plumbing, and while I'm frugal, I'm not frugal enough to use a sawdust toilet. But what is the problem? That is their choice!

As for the sanitation issue, I'm betting their sawdust toilet is alot more sanitary than any public restroom out there!!!!!!!

You seem awful outspoken for somebody who just joined 11/08/07. Are you actually here to learn something or to cause problems? And yes, you are out of line. Perhaps you should take note that swearing is not permitted here!!!!!

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Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania

"Everything happens for a reason."

Yes, with proper composting sufficient heat is generated to kill everything that is likely to harm me. Now this is in the testing stage as I have only been doing this for 19 years. Psst! Please don't tell, but it works for me.

If I use any dirt at all I use it on the compost pile as a light cover. I rarely use anything but sawdust because I live where there is plenty of it for the hauling.

This is one mindset. My mindset is that these folks have advanced so far that unlike you and me they are no longer carpping in their drinking water! THAT is primitive and backward.

I do know one thing and forgive me for saying is I am so glad that I will never be invited to your house for breakfast, lunch or supper if in fact you are putting your own toilet in your garden. When I take vacation through any state now and see a home grown produce stand I will not stop anymore not knowing if they are using the same unsanitary methods as some of you are using. Even if you are claiming to compost it, you can't compost human waste in a homemade compost bin and it be safe. If I am invited to someone's house and I need to use the rest room and they offer me a slop pot that has been in the house for a week , first of all I will know that the minute I walk in they have one and second of all I would leave right away without so much as an explaination never to return. As I said , I would go out in the pasture or the woods which is just fine with me and one choice I prefer before I use a slop pot that has been fermenting for a week in someone's house , sawdust or no sawdust. I do know that this toilet thread is off limits for me cause I just can't see me reading nor learning anything here. I am just sad that I can't maybe teach ya'll something since you are convinced that human waste is ok to keep in your house for more than a couple of hours. I grew up just as you people are trying to live now, we didn't have a choice being so poor , but we were clean. GOD BLESS YOU and hope you don't get sick.

Finished compost is a considerably different product than raw humanure.
The two are completely incomparable.

As for meat in the compost pile, we offer a service to the farming community at large to dispose of their dead livestock when necessary.
At any given time we'll have 50 to 100 dead hogs, several full sized cow carcasses, several horses and dozens of calves in our piles. The local meat locker has brought us the offal from as many as 600 deer at a time during deer season. There is no odor to our piles, though they be many and large.
The heat and bacterial action render the largest carcasses to nothing but clean bones and black, odorless humus in less than four months when conditions are right. We spread the material on our gardens and fields, saving the bones to be ground later for chicken feed supplement and grit, as well as fertilizer for the gardens, orchard and vineyards.

Let go of your prejudices and phobias, and, whatever you do, be careful when challenging the intelligence and experience of people you do not know.
The local university brings out anthropology, botany, alternative energy and religion classes, of all things, to our "homestead" and the professors are usually taking notes more vigorously than the students.

well this is how I understand it and many labs have proven, HEAT kills pathenogens, not filtering. Filtering filters, makes things smaller, filters out large particles. so no matter how much ground the sewerage goes through the pathenogens are not KILLED,and they trickle right down to your drinking water. YUMMY... However HEAT does kill pathenogens, and composting properly creates enough heat to start killing pathenogens within hours. After the compost has filled, and rested for a year it is reverted back to pathenogen free dirt. A septic system is in the cold ground, theres no heat to kill anything!! There are about 50 or more State Parks who now compost and use it for their landscaping. Compost Toilets are now recognized in many states by the dept, of health, and the government is starting to catch on about living green.

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"The Will of God will never take you to where the Grace of God will not protect you."

You have a pretty bad case of fecalphobia there. There is nothing nasty or dirty or revolting about human waste. People have been brainwashed to believe that it is somehow evil and filled with terrible diseases but this is just not the case. It came from INSIDE YOUR BODY, remember that, so if there are terrible pathogens there, it is because you harbored them. Healthy people do not have waste products that cause disease. Yes, there is ecoli which should not be consumed (ecoli, is also present in the SOIL - it is not limited to just human waste products). That is why you compost it for a full year, so that all of the bacteria that *could* cause problems if consumed, are rendered harmless and inert by the composting process. Compost gets very, very hot as the others here have stated. This heat kills any bad bacteria which might be in the coomposted material.

The item you refer to as a "slop bucket" is a very clean, and odorless container. Once in a while a little sawdust does spill on the floor (especially if you get distracted at the last minute) lol. But a quick wipe with a damp paper towel or a mini-vac makes short work of it. Most importantly, I personally save probably about 1,000 gallons of pure, clean drinking water which would otherwise be flushed down the toilet for no good reason whatsoever. Since less than 2 percent of the world's population has clean drinking water, I feel that it is my MORAL duty to conserve as much of it as possible. I would think that those folks in Georgia, NC and other drought-stricken states would not have had near the problem with water if they hadn't flushed down MILLIONS of gallons of it a month along with their poo! LOL What monumental stupidity.

Anyway, until you are willing to consider other points of view and accept that human body waste is a good, natural, healthy thing, you will never understand why myself and the others have chosen this path. Perhaps in time your understanding will grow to the point where you do understand and may even try it yourself.

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Tisk, tisk! How unfortunate it was to read your posts. Quite rude, if I do say so myself. It is obvious that your education did not cover agro/environmental/farming/etc. I may not know how to speak or read Latin, but I certainly would not call those that do "filthy" and "uneducated".

You have been measured,human....and found wanting.
I do not belive that you have anything to *teach* .

But then again, you are likely a troll, looking to cause trouble.

Goddess Bless you!

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Merry Meet, Merry Part, Merry Meet Again. Blessed Be!

Choice. We use it because of choice.

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http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

The bucket is easier to empty if you line it with newspaper first.

__________________
http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

TxAprilMagic is obviously fixated on a 'slop bucket'. These were merely a temporary holding container for fresh human solid and liquid waste with the intent of their being emptied as quickly as possibly - usually into an outhouse. No attempt was made to mask the odor and I suspect we all know what mixed urine and 'c**p' smells like.

They apparently aren't willing to read up on the humanus concept and consider anyone willing to live without all of the modern conveniences to be somewhat uncivilalized.

They certainly seem out of place on a 'homesteading' board.

(Good gracious, I pee in the yard or off the back deck probably as often as I do inside. How uncivilalized of me.)

For an interesting read see if your local library and get you a loaner copy of Farmers of Forty Centuries. Focuses primarily on China in which human waste was extensively used in agriculture - sometimes composted, but often as manure tea. Rural farmers would carry their produce into cities and then return with fresh human waste. Those located on roads would often build an outhouse-type shed by it for use by travelers and occasionally would build them over the fish and duck pond for direct deposits so to speak.

Question though, why don't you dust a tad of finely ground limestone over the sawdust also. Seems it would be beneficial in offsetting the acids in the sawdust as it composts.

I did not call anyone uncivilized. I said keeping a slop pot in your house for more than a day is nasty and it is still nasty. Even the pioneers looked for better ways of improving themselves not go backwards. As far as being out of place on a Homesteading forum,
1. If you buy your land your are not "homesteading" Just living in the country. Everybody from a subdivision in the city to a trailer park on the outside of town is filed on a "homestead exemption".
2. I still have the no. 2 wash tub I took a bath in and washed clothes in til I was 26 years old and the scrub board that I still use today. I had several tubs but the others were worn clean through the bottom
3. I raise cattle,
4. Ihave a garden,
5. I use kerosene lamps and alot of the other things that I grew up with. I do have modern stuff that I use on occassion.
6. I hang my clothes out on a clothes line.
7. I plant and mow by the Almanac
so on and so on
8. wash my dishes by hand
9. We cook on an open pit outside

But I don't crap in my compost or my garden.
Human waste has to be processed , not composted.

Like I said, even the pilgrims tried to invent and discover to make their lives better not stay in poverty conditions. Now , I am not calling you poor so don't get all riled up. I said poverty conditions.

I am a very frugal person. My husband can build anything that betters our lives. I don't keep garbage up at the house at all. We have a place for that and that is where it goes. Maybe I am a clean freak but I was taught to be clean. You people are trying to go back to basics which is a great thing but don't go back so far that you jeapardize your health or the health of your family and you insult the people before you saying that is the way they did it BECAUSE WE DID NOT DO IT THAT WAY. Slop pots were designed to be temporary and some of ya'll have turned it into a way of life that never use to be. That is nasty.

You as a small home farm compost can not and I repeat can not treat human waste to a stage of complete sanitation and use it in your home gardens. I went to science class and you need to process human waste not compost it.
You are wrong in a lot of your thinking and doings. Books are wonderful things and we have a library in our house , I mean a library but a lot of those people that write those books have never lived that way , they are just selling books. Unless you know them personally you have no idea that they are full of crap.

My husband and I would have no problem living strickly off the land if the need should arise.

Think I am rude, so be it.
Think I am out of place on your forum, so be it.
I think maybe I am since I don't want to insult my forefathers who struggled so hard to make a better life for themselves and their children only to be insulted by how you think they lived.

I stand by my convictions. having a slop pot in the house that long is just nasty. Putting human waste in a compost for a garden is just nasty and extremely unhealthy or even dangerous. You are not equipted as a processing plant and never will be at home.

I am really sorry that I even read such a post.
Now I am scarred for the rest of my life thinking that if I buy produce from a small out of the way farm that they put human waste on my veggies.
I will never look at it the same way again.
You call it homesteading
I call it sad
Not my cup of tea
My forefathers didn't live in filth because they wanted too.
They improved themselves anyway they could.
Your homesteading is not what I remember growing up in the deep south
Yours is from a book that someone else thinks what it was like. Mine was real , I will keep it the way I remember it not what you are pretending it to have been. You are recreating fantasy

I think all we are asking is that you at least read The Humanus Book as you will see it the practice is no where near taking a fresh slop jar and putting it on your garden.

But, please do tell me, if in early Spring when you are about to till your garden and someone stopped by offering you a load of cow, or hog, or sheep, or horse manure free for the dumping would you take it and work it into your garden? Doesn't the concept of 'organic' farming or gardening include incorporation of animal waste? If so, what do you consider to be the difference between it and human waste - composted and otherwise? I suspect all of those who use a sawdust bucket would say to be on the safe side, while they might incorporate fresh livestock manure, they would only incorporate well composted human manure.

(But, then, fresh urine is sterile and has been used to clean battle wounds.)

I don't think anyone here is advocating slop jars or direct application. All which is being said is properly composted human waste is no more determental to human health that any other food source.

And keep in mind basically there isn't anything like the one-day flu - almost certainly food poisoning. I don't recall a single case of e-coli acquired from a farmers' market or on-the-farm produce stand, but could be wrong. Yet, it seems like about once a week I read about a produce or meat recall due to it. Remember your supermarket fresh produce comes not only from the U.S., but many other countries as well, where their sanitation (and herbicide and pesticide) practices may be questionable. Perhaps you need to stop buying from grocery stores also.

On our forefathers, I visited relatives in Croatia in 2001 and they had an old, no longer used, outhouse. I asked them about waste disposal and was told in spring, after the prior year's compost was applied to the garden, as a new layer of compost was added to the pile and shovel full or two of the outhouse contents were mixed in with it. At that time, most of the village water came from hand-dug wells. They reported the water was fine. It only became comtaminated AFTER in-door plumbing and backyard septic systems were installed. At the property were my grandfather was born and raised I was told by the current owners they had the only uncomtaminated well in the entire community now.

How many of our ancestors aquired TB from fresh cow milk from a TB comtaminated cow? While that problem largely doesn't exist in the U.S. today, I've read were TB is the leading cause of immigrant rejection today. Family story goes when a family group immigrated one of the children was disnoised with TB at Ellis Island and rejected. An adult had to take her back to Europe.

(On septic systems, by and large, the leach field water isn't returned to the aquifer. Typically the aquifer runs under a layer of stone, such as limestone. The only way such surface seepage could reenter the aquifer directly would be through a gap between the well casing and that layer or cracks in the rock.)

Old joke: Two men are sitting at poolside in a foreign resort when one tells the other how he won't drink the local water due to possible health affects. Other one asked, "And just where do you think they get icecubes in your drink?"

Ken, to answer your question concerning lime, the acid condition in sawdust is mild and quickly resolves itself as the thermophilics begin their work.
Lime actually reacts negatively with nitrogen, driving the latter out of the mix and into the atmosphere, where it is lost to the cause.
The same reaction occurs with the addition of wood ashes to the sawdust/manure mix. Lime and wood ash are both best added directly to the soil and kept out of the compost pile. It is even highly recommended that compost be added in the spring and lime/ash in the fall, or vice versa, to prevent a negative reaction in the field.

TxAprilMagic - I sent you a private message. Look near the upper right corner of this page and click on "Private Messages."

It's a nice message, not a flaming one.

Rose

__________________
Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Since when is using a non-flushing toilet a sign of poverty? Or filth?

Water is a precious commodity, and composting toilets will the be toilet of the future.

__________________
http://thissmallfrenchtown.blogspot.com/

http://thefrenchneighbor.blogspot.com/

I think it's futile to even try to attempt to teach TxAprilMagic anything. She has made it perfectly clear that she is much more smarter and educated than any of us country bumpkins here.

She can't understand why some of the people here have "slop pots" in their house. I've never used a sawdust toilet, but even I know there is a big difference between a slop pot and a sawdust toilet - but to TxAprilMagic both are the same thing. I guess some here will just continue to live in "filth" according to her.

I would say she has a germ phobia now that we have ruined all chances of her stopping at any local farm markets for fear they have used human manure on the food. I guess the produce in the grocerty stores just appear by magic and there is always more in the back.

Let me give you some advice TxAprilMagic. If you open a thread here that "disgusts" you, the best thing to do is to close it and move on. It's apparent to many here, that your "higher level" of education has resulted in you having a closed mind.

This will be my last reply to you, as I've always been told not to feed the trolls.

__________________
Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania

"Everything happens for a reason."

Howdy Rose

That emergency potty close by sure is peace of mind, isn't it!!

Rick

I always wondered why the grass seemed so much greener around the deck?

Sorry, I didn't mean to prolong two obvious "checkmated" points of view.
I agree to disagree with the slop bucket senerio.
I'm done now.