Reasons to Consider a Composting Toilet

It's the time of year when we start to receive requests and questions about our composting toilets at Shelter.

Composting Toilets are an excellent option for the sanitary disposal of waste when plumbing, water, or electricity are not available or easily accessible. We see composting toilets used in cottages, boat houses, garden sheds, pool houses, barns, remote offices or guest spaces, and coastal cottages where a leach field isn't permitted. Another common locale for a composting toilet is in an older home where toilet waste needs to be removed from an overloaded septic system.

Some households are converting from conventional flush toilets for environmental reasons. Toilet flushing is the single largest water use in the average U.S. home (according to the EPA), accounting for about 30% of total home water demand. More than 4.8 billion gallons of water per day is flushed out of homes in the U.S. That is a significant environmental burden on fresh water resources, municipal sewer systems, or home wells and septic systems. And if the state of our current infrastructure doesn't improve—see the grade here—composting toilets, or something like them, may be much more common in the future.

Visit our store to see the Sun-Mar Composting toilet display models in person to get a feel for the size and shape of the toilets. Our knowledgeable staff has first-hand experience with the Sunmar composting toilet line and can assist you with sizing, installation, and maintenance questions.

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New Book on Sustainable Beekeeping at Shelter

Christy Hemenway, founder of Gold Star Honeybees, has published a thoughtful and innovative guide to beekeeping titled, The Thinking Beekeeper: A Guide to Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives. The book has been chosen as a Mother Earth News Wiser Living Choice and is being touted as the definitive do-it-yourself guide to natural and sustainable beekeeping.

Christy has offered her Top Bar Beekeeping class at Shelter, and we have seen a significant increase in interest in beekeeping. With honey bee populations under threat (see this recent piece in the New York Times), many are choosing to help sustain this small and vital part of our ecosystem by providing a pesticide-free home for bees in their backyard. If you're getting started beekeeping or are an experienced beekeeper and looking for guidance, we highly recommend this book, which is available at Shelter or online at Shelter Tools.

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Top Bar Beekeeping 101: February 9-10 at Shelter

A New York Times reporter referred to bees as the "angels of agriculture." It's amazing to learn and see how essential bees are to the production of our food.  A recent documentary vividly depicts the threats facing bees. We can help sustain these essential insects by maintaining hives in our own backyards and get the wonderful reward of harvesting honey.

Shelter has again invited guest speaker, Christy Hemenway from Gold Star Honeybees, to offer a two-day "Intensive" beekeeping workshop on Top Bar Beekeeping February 9-10 at the Shelter campus. The class is designed specifically for those who want to get started keeping bees in top bar hives in the 2013 beekeeping season.

This in-depth class—with emphasis on the why of things—combines important how-to information, history, hive management techniques, and natural disease and pest control methods. You can get started with confidence!

The Weekend Intensive workshop is two full days of "Bee Buzz" and includes the following topics:

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Environmentally Friendly Milk Paint

By Rebecca, Shelter Tools Staff

We get lots of interesting requests here in the Shelter Tools store for products, but one of the most common items asked for is milk paint. After discovering the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company at a trade show, the store can now enthusiastically answer, “Yes!” when someone comes in asking for the product. But what the heck is this stuff?

Milk paint—distinguished by its lack of sheen and flat, coarse look—has been around for a very, very long time. It was very commonly used in Colonial America and is called for in many reproduction projects. However, it actually covers the oldest known painted surfaces in the world, including some of the artifacts found in King Tut’s tomb. It is so durable and colorfast that your great, great grandchildren and their kids will be able to enjoy it too. The paint’s two main ingredients—milk and lime—were readily available during the era (many communities had local lime pits). A protein in the milk, casein, reacts with the hydrated lime to create a solution that adheres well to porous surfaces and then hardens. As an added bonus, the alkaline lime works with the acids in the milk to create a chemically neutral mixture.

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Vernal Pool Setbacks

Topsham, Maine Vernal Pool
Photo from Maine Association
of Conservation Commissions Website

In Maine there is a heated debate roaring about changing construction setbacks for vernal pools. A vernal pool (sometimes called vernal ponds or ephemeral pools) "are temporary pools of water. They are usually devoid of fish, and thus allow the safe development of natal amphibian and insect species." (Wikipedia) A bill that would allow development closer to vernal pools drew enthusiastic support from landowners and strong opposition from environmentalists Monday at a hearing before the Legislature's Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

The current regulation requires a setback of 250 feet. That number is under constant critique, making for exciting and sometimes even explosive conversations at cocktail parties and social gatherings. (Well, at least at the social gatherings we attend.) The bill proposes dropping the setback down to 75-feet. A summary of the legal language on the bill itself is... "This bill changes to 75 feet the setback for significant vernal pool habitat, high and moderate value inland waterfowl and wading bird habitat and shorebird nesting, feeding and staging areas. It also provides a mechanism to compensate landowners for the property value losses incurred as a result of more stringent setback regulations."

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