I keep a compost pile—actually two—in my back yard. They’re very basic and simple, but they work for me: four sturdy metal fence posts wrapped twice in fine mesh fencing. The wire mesh is sunk six inches below the ground, and it’s three feet high and about three feet wide in any direction.

One compost pile is within the bounds of my garden, which is also fenced in, but the other is close to the house, by the shed. This is what I call my “active” pile because it’s the one that gets all the fresh stuff: kitchen scraps, grass clippings, leaves, and so on.

Whenever I dump my scraps from the kitchen—banana peels, coffee grounds, old grapes, cantaloupe rinds, onion peels, apple cores, and the like—I bury them within the decomposing pile and cover it all with grass clippings or straw or anything that will hide the scraps and help disguise the smell. Why?

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