After Reading Backyard Farming Composting: Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts
Backyard Farming: Composting by Kim Pezza
Author: Kim Pezza | ISBN: 978-1-57826-587-9
Previous: Composting Troubleshooting
Pezza’s closing pages are short and upbeat. Composting is for anyone, anywhere. Landfills get relief. Soil gets rebuilt. One finished batch hooks you into starting the next.
She nudges you to collect scraps from non-composting friends until they see your results and want in. You might end up giving away soil to visitors with bags. Share it. You know how to make more.
Bins, barrels, heaps, or kitchen buckets. The method matters less than starting.
What stuck with me across the whole book
Smell is your dashboard. Woodlot earth = good. Ammonia = too much green. Rotten eggs = too wet, needs air. Worms included.
Space doesn’t excuse you. Trench composting, plastic totes, worm towers, and countertop buckets cover apartments to acreage.
Browns and greens are volume intuition, not lab work. Aim near 25 to 30:1 carbon to nitrogen, adjust by heat and odor, keep a chart handy when in doubt.
Heat has a purpose. Thermophilic stages kill seeds and many pathogens. Cool piles sprout surprises.
Vermicomposting is the apartment path. Red wigglers need moisture, stable temps, and patience at harvest. Castings are worth it for houseplants alone.
The no-list protects you. Meat, pet waste, treated wood, and glossy paper aren’t worth the raccoon raid or toxin risk.
Livestock composting is real. Niche, regulated, but Pezza’s firsthand goat story shows it’s doable with carbon, mulch, and site planning.
Honest overall impression
Backyard Farming: Composting is a starter manual, not an encyclopedia. You won’t get deep microbiology or municipal-scale science. You will get enough to build a bin this weekend, fix a smelly pile next month, and explain compost to skeptical neighbors.
Kim Pezza writes like someone who’s taught workshops in a barn. Practical, occasionally funny, willing to say “check your extension office” when law and safety matter.
The book dates to 2015. Some resource links may rot. Core biology doesn’t. C:N ratios worked in Cleopatra’s Egypt and they work now.
If you read nothing else
Read Chapter 3 for system choice, Chapter 5 for inputs, Chapter 6 for balance, Chapter 9 when something breaks. Skim history for fun. Worm chapter if you’re indoors.
What I’d do next
Pick one system matched to your space. Start collecting scraps in a lidded bucket today. Build or buy the bin this week. Accept that batch one teaches more than any book.
Pezza ends with one word after your first harvest: Enjoy!
Hard to argue with that.