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Saturday, November 9, 2013

HOUSTON RAIN BARREL AND COMPOST BIN SALE

So today, the City of Houston had a really neat sale.  This group goes around the country and they come up with a deal for the various cities and then sell rain barrels and compost bins at discounted prices to residents.


Above are the two items they had, we got this flyer in our water bill a couple of weeks ago.  We debated on the rain barrel but a) we don't have gutters on the farm house yet and b) I'd really like to make our own.
So we opted for compost bins.  Two of them!

Rain barrel and compost bin sale Houston
So, on an overcast cool morning in the shadow of downtown skyscrapers, people started  showing up. I got there about 15 minutes before the sale started...

Standing room only
...and this was already the line...

People in line for the rain barrel sale
...and it continued down and around the block.  Hundreds of people.  It was really kind of nice to see actually, all these people taking home rain barrels and compost bins.  It's got to start somewhere, right?

Rain barrel and compost bin sale
There were two 18 wheelers filled with the goodies.  It took about an hour to get to the front of the line.  They had a pretty efficient operation going on.

Rain barrels for sale
Rain barrels galore!

Compost bins for sale
Compost bins galore!


And this adorable little one, I would presume, is the next generation!  Actually, there were many kids there, I think that's really nice to see as well.

More on our purchases later!


8 comments:

  1. Nice to see how popular they are! I have two compost bins and I looked at one of them the other day to see that it is rich dark compost in there! Excited, you can bet your bottom dollar I was, my first ever home produced compost!

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    1. It's going to be our first time composting, very excited. I'll post pics of where I put them and such. I saw 2nd Family's compost and it's truly like they say "black gold", ha.

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  2. I got my black compost bin from the city many (15-20) years ago for $5! It has served me well, even though the bottom is now wired together, the top won't line up with the bottom any more, and the lid blew away last year. I've been trying to talk my son into building me a tumbling composter. He says it would be so easy, but so far I don't see one out there in my garden LOL! I know I could buy a large garbage, can with a lid that can be clamped down, drill holes in it and roll it across the yard to mix the contents. That just sounds like too much "exercise" to me ;-)

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    1. I love that cities do this kind of stuff (of course the price is up a bit, ha). I have been looking at composters, including those tumbling kinds and I just needed to get something that was easy to set up. They all seemed very expensive, and making one, well, the rain barrel, I have a plans for, but the tumbling type looked a little beyond my expertise, ha. This worked out perfectly. I'm so excited. We might have to store our scraps during the week and take it out on the weekend. But more on that in another post. Compost happens! :-)

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    2. Geesh. Why so violent with the compost bin, Gran??

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    3. I can imagine if I were a compost bin in Granny's yard I'd be worn out too. If she has a 1000 lbs of produce there must be a couple hundred of compostable material, ha.

      Or she's just taking out her frustrations on her bin, LOL!

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    4. The latter being the most likely scenario. :-D

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  3. How cool is that! Time to move to Houston!!! hehe

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