Published in the Columbia Missourian
Halloween is over, and your candy's almost gone. The pumpkin on your front step is turning black and starting to cave in. It's time to get rid of it before it gets really gross.
There are a few things you can do with it.
You can put it in the garbage and have the city trash collectors take it to the landfill. There it will sit, buried under more trash, far from the air it needs to decompose.
It could take 50 years - maybe more - before the pumpkin decays. Until then, it will occupy space in the landfill.
But pumpkins have a lot to offer the world. They have all kinds of nutrients to give to plants in your house and garden. You have a choice of things to do with the pumpkins.
"You can compost your pumpkin really easily," said Tina Hubbs, city recycling volunteer. A compost is a mixture of things considered to be trash that can be turned into fertilizer.
There are three options for composting here in Columbia.
First there's a yard compost. You can build a bin out of newspaper, sticks and string. In your yard bin, you can compost food, yard waste and pumpkins! It's very easy, not messy at all, and you can even do some of it yourself, if an adult helps.
You also can use a worm composter. This uses worms to help break down the waste. They east the food and organic waste you put in the bin, turning it into useful fertilizer. Cut your pumpkin into chunks and put the chunks into the worm bin.
The last option you have is to use the city's composting facility. Every house has clear plastic bags for yard and garden waste. You can put your pumpkin in there, too, and it will be composted at the city's central compost pile.
When the pumpkin has finished turning into compost, you can use it for lots of things. If you have a garden, you can spread the compost there to make it healthier. If you have house plants, you can mix the compost with soil to make a rich potting soil. You can also spread it on your lawn to help it grow.
There is more than one way to explore things to do with compost.
For example, pile up a bunch of leaves in your yard. Your parents will appreciate the help, and when you're done, you can jump in them!
After you've had your fun jumping in the leaf pile, put your old pumpkin at the bottom of it and cover it with leaves.
When spring rolls around uncover the pumpkin and see what it looks like. What happened to it over the winter?
If you want to learn more about composting, the city runs composting workshops throughout the year to teach you how. There are demonstration sites at Oakland Junior High School and the Community Garden on North Ninth Street.
Of course, besides pumpkins, you can compost food and yard waste as well. Composting is a great way to reduce the amount of trash your family generates, and you can help the environment by keeping useful stuff - such as pumpkins - out of landfills.
Monday, November 10, 1997
Sunday, November 2, 1997
Parents get more than money from annual event
Published in the Columbia Missourian
At 5:30 a.m. the sun is rising over the fields. Clouds obscure the horizon at the edge of a brightening sky.
Clouds fill the kitchen, too, as Two Mile Prairie Elementary School's pancake griddle heats up, throwing smoke into the air.
"Okay, higher math here. 45 servings," says principal Jack Jensen, as he dips a measure cup into a two-pound can of ground coffee.
Volunteers are busy preparing for an onslaught of hungry humans, all trooping in for the school's PTA fund-raising event. Some volunteers supervise the 10-gallon Hobart mixer beating pancake batter into readiness. Others tear into cases of Jimmy Dean pork sausage, setting them in trays for the waiting broiler.
6:15 a.m. The griddle is way too hot, and it smokes as the volunteer chefs struggle to gain control of the temperature.
"Well, I burned the first batch," says first-shift chef Tom Thurston.
"That's to season the griddle, isn't it?" Jensen says, laughing.
With the griddle burning-hot, Thurston shuts the flames off.
"I can cook for at least an hour on this," he says.
Even before the sun made its appearance, the bright-eyed adults had set up 14 tables, with eight chairs at each, in the school gym. They follow one of the eight rules of eating, posted on the wall: "No more than eight to a table." They hope that the guests will obey rule seven: "Eat your own food."
For $2.50, guests get all the pancakes and sausage they can eat, fresh from the Two Mile Prairie kitchen.
The volunteers - among them a small-business owner, an MU administrator, and a homemaker - are armed with four gallons of pancake syrup, 40 pounds of pancake mix and more than 250 sausage patties.
By 6:30 a.m. there are enough volunteers on hand to have some waiting around for things to do. In 90 minutes the doors will open and the eating will begin.
"We had a steady stream of people from 8:00 to about 9:30," Jensen said.
10:00 a.m. The big rush is over. Everyone has lost count of everything.
"I know we've served a lot of pancakes," Jensen said, shaking his head.
What were neat stacks of plates, napkins and forks are now small piles of lonely place-settings.
It's a PTA fund-raising event, but it's hard to tell. Nobody talks about the PTA. All the conversation is about friendships, communities and neighbors.
"It's almost more of a social event," said Rhonda Smith, a mother of four. Two of her children have now left Two Mile Prairie. The other two are still at the school.
Parents gather with their children, greeting friends and talking about Halloween.
"It's like your own little country store," Smith said. Maybe, but it's a country store with a playground. When they're done eating, the kids take their pancake-and-sausage energy outside.
Ten or so of them play soccer in the November sunshine.
11:00 a.m. Katrina, a new kindergartner, plays on the slide with her brother and sister, who have left Two Mile Prairie for Lange Middle School.
Inside, other children are helping the parents clean up. One wields a mop taller than she is. Another stretches to reach the middle of a table with a sponge.
The grown-ups are washing dishes. Everyone is laughing and smiling.
It was a success. The impressive array of food was enough to sate the appetite of the masses. There was no extra. It's all gone.
At 5:30 a.m. the sun is rising over the fields. Clouds obscure the horizon at the edge of a brightening sky.
Clouds fill the kitchen, too, as Two Mile Prairie Elementary School's pancake griddle heats up, throwing smoke into the air.
"Okay, higher math here. 45 servings," says principal Jack Jensen, as he dips a measure cup into a two-pound can of ground coffee.
Volunteers are busy preparing for an onslaught of hungry humans, all trooping in for the school's PTA fund-raising event. Some volunteers supervise the 10-gallon Hobart mixer beating pancake batter into readiness. Others tear into cases of Jimmy Dean pork sausage, setting them in trays for the waiting broiler.
6:15 a.m. The griddle is way too hot, and it smokes as the volunteer chefs struggle to gain control of the temperature.
"Well, I burned the first batch," says first-shift chef Tom Thurston.
"That's to season the griddle, isn't it?" Jensen says, laughing.
With the griddle burning-hot, Thurston shuts the flames off.
"I can cook for at least an hour on this," he says.
Even before the sun made its appearance, the bright-eyed adults had set up 14 tables, with eight chairs at each, in the school gym. They follow one of the eight rules of eating, posted on the wall: "No more than eight to a table." They hope that the guests will obey rule seven: "Eat your own food."
For $2.50, guests get all the pancakes and sausage they can eat, fresh from the Two Mile Prairie kitchen.
The volunteers - among them a small-business owner, an MU administrator, and a homemaker - are armed with four gallons of pancake syrup, 40 pounds of pancake mix and more than 250 sausage patties.
By 6:30 a.m. there are enough volunteers on hand to have some waiting around for things to do. In 90 minutes the doors will open and the eating will begin.
"We had a steady stream of people from 8:00 to about 9:30," Jensen said.
10:00 a.m. The big rush is over. Everyone has lost count of everything.
"I know we've served a lot of pancakes," Jensen said, shaking his head.
What were neat stacks of plates, napkins and forks are now small piles of lonely place-settings.
It's a PTA fund-raising event, but it's hard to tell. Nobody talks about the PTA. All the conversation is about friendships, communities and neighbors.
"It's almost more of a social event," said Rhonda Smith, a mother of four. Two of her children have now left Two Mile Prairie. The other two are still at the school.
Parents gather with their children, greeting friends and talking about Halloween.
"It's like your own little country store," Smith said. Maybe, but it's a country store with a playground. When they're done eating, the kids take their pancake-and-sausage energy outside.
Ten or so of them play soccer in the November sunshine.
11:00 a.m. Katrina, a new kindergartner, plays on the slide with her brother and sister, who have left Two Mile Prairie for Lange Middle School.
Inside, other children are helping the parents clean up. One wields a mop taller than she is. Another stretches to reach the middle of a table with a sponge.
The grown-ups are washing dishes. Everyone is laughing and smiling.
It was a success. The impressive array of food was enough to sate the appetite of the masses. There was no extra. It's all gone.
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