Backwoods Journal Part six

1986

After years of working off our homestead to make enough money for improvements, we had electricity and a phone installed, a well dug and our road improved.

Enthused with a desire for an indoor toilet, we added a bathroom off the porch, also making a nice entrance hall for hanging coats and leaving muddy shoes.

I read an ad for a composting toilet in our local classifieds, we decided we had to have it.
”You feed it like a rabbit,” the seller/owner told us. I don’t know why we didn’t ask her why she was selling it.  We listened intently to the instructions and happily carted  it home. As long as it had vegetation, scant water and wasn’t used by more than two or three people, it would compost the sewage into black rich soil in no time at all. It sounded like the best invention yet.

Well, the too-good-to-be-true feeling was one I should have listened more closely to because it was. We fed our new ‘rabbit’ greens, leftover fruit, grains and used only a tiny amount of water each flush and just when we thought we had mastered the delicate balance, we had visitors. They didn’t listen when we relayed the instructions on the care and feeding of our new appliance and used too much water to flush.  It regurgitated onto the new bathroom floor.

Fruit flies loved it and it became quite disgusting to see them in the kitchen, knowing full well where they had originated. The second time the toilet threw up Ken lifted the whole thing with a surge of superhuman power and flung it through the door into the yard.  It stayed out behind the shop for years, an ugly reminder that hard-earned money had been wasted on something that wasn’t necessary or practical.

But the small bathtub and hot water tank were wonderful improvements which we enjoyed immensely.