We do a lot with dirt. We dig in it. We play in it. We garden in it. We eat it (well, not all of us, just the little ones). The dirt in Indiana is lousy. It is solid clay with lots of shale. Not very good for gardening. So we do raised beds. But making raised beds requires lots of dirt. So for now, we’ve had to buy compost.

In New Jersey, we got compost for free from our ecological facility. It was beautiful (if you like compost 🙂 I was very disappointed to discover that nobody in Indiana sells real compost. They may call it compost, but it’s not very good stuff.

Anyway, compost usually runs about $25 a yard. One yard completely fills the back of Jim’s pickup truck. The dirt place is about 30 miles round trip from our house. So altogether it costs us about $30 and two hours (by the time we unload it) to get a yard of dirt.

Coming home from work the other day, Jim saw that the dirt place was running a compost sale for $5 a yard! Jim had a brilliant idea (he often does) – he took his garbage truck home by way of the dirt place. He filled the truck up with 5 yards, backed into our driveway and had the garbage truck empty it. Then he went back and did it again! So, instead of $300 and 20 hours worth of hard work – it was $52 and 1 hour of easy work.

Who knew that having a garbage truck at our disposal would be so handy?

And yes, the pun was intended.