I agree with Rott, however now the City is involved in the dispute. If you give the city officials who visit you enough ammunition to educate the people they report to re: their own municipal standards for composting, it will most likely take care of the problem if you following the composting guidelines. You don't want to make a "lid" however, if you simply lay another pallet on top, both light and water will get in the bin and screen it a bit and still create good compost. It's a thought. I don't know the height of your homes, or your restrictions for screening, but you could consider planting a cheap hedge. My immediate neighbors party 24/7 on the front lawn with about 20 other men. Day and night. Not too loud but whenever I go outside they are all there staring at me,cat calls and other rudeness. Nothing can be done except HEDGE. I can't wait until it's cool enough to plant a very fast growing hedge, since I can not install a tall fence in that area. My property is very large for an urban property and my front yard equals the width of 3 normal small front yards. All of it is gardened - one purely veggies ringged in flowers, the other a potager and the third is mostly herbs (although looks like a flower garden). The garden has inspired 4 neighbors to remove lawns and plant gardens, and a 5th is planning on it this fall (out of 11 people on our end of the street besides us). Everyone loves it!

I am a new member to gw and hope I am not intruding here but Wow! We are attempting this exact same thing right now. We moved to 82 acres of sand and sage brush just over a year ago and are starting with absolutly nothing but what we brought with us and can provide or build on our own. We are 38 miles from the edge of town and we are 100 percent off grid. We have no address, so no fire , police, or medical services of any kind out here. When we moved here our plans were to gradually build up to a self sustaining life style over a period of a few years. We had a savings and job options all lined up. Instaed, the economy tanked and I lost any hope of working due to my health. We were kind of forced to decide on the spot if we realy wanted to do this or if we were going to go back to the city. We decide this realy is what we want to do and have been sticking to it. We haul water, we are building solar panels, have a very small geni for night time power and heat with scavaenged wood and use straw for insulation for both us and the animals. It took a full year for my partner to find any kind of work at all we lived off of saving and my tiny disability income until then and now most of his pay goes for fuel to get to work(79 miles round trip every day) . I was not able to get a pair of goats until Aug 25th of last year. We still need two more does so that we can keep a clean heard of 3-5 goats going at all times for both meat and milk. We have chickens ( the first thing we put out here, Reds, Amercanas,Siklies, and Bantoms) as well as Ducks and Pheasant. We plan on Turkeys and Geese this year. We also plan on rabbits in the future ( the new zelands )but have a large wild population to hunt for now. We will be saving for American Guinea Hogs and Irish Dexter Cattle. If we must, we will do a Dexter / Jersy cross for the cattle. We only want the smaller heiratige breads of the larger livestock since they are much nicer to the land ( I can comfortably range 3-5 dexters on the same amount of land as 1 of the standard breads of cattle and that 3-5 animals is all we will need ) and they can comfortably handle our major temp swings with out health issues. I only managed a small experimental bed last year. It was to see if I could grow all of the things that the folks here has major dificulty with since they are some of the mainstays in most home gardens (tomatoes , peppers, beans, greens, and mushrooms ). With a lot of creative gardening , it worked. So this year will be my first real garden attempt. A large percentage of what others have posted is on our list of things to plant or grow. This is not an all inclusive list but we have also added things Quinoa , flax , sorgums, sunchokes, sunflowwers, barley, oats, rye, buck wheat, soybeans, alfalfa, millet, wheat and clover ( because all of these they are good for both human and animal consumption). Most of these things can be grow together because they devolpe and mature at different times, many are symbiotic relationship plants ( think 3 sisters planting,like corn, beans and squash in the same bed), and they also build and maintaining the soil. We have not yet aquired most of these but hope to soon. They provide food crops and fodder crops at different stages so the production is double duty. With carefull and selective harvesting and seed saving we can set aside next years crop of some of the anuals like the buck wheat. We have plans on a small orchard and I received a gift of a few nut trees for birthday ( 2 hazel nuts a pecan and an almond) and they should arive in june. We will also try to take advantage of the native plants to incourage the continued diversity of wild life we have out here. If the Fox, Cyotes ,hawks,eagles, mountain lions , badgers and other bigger preditor types have an ample food sources, our animals are less attractive to them. We also get better polination , and bug controls. I am an experianced gardener but not in this zone 5 and with these kind of temp swings ( We are alpine high desert with -5 to -15 in the winter , 100 plus regularly in the summer and a last frost date of june 10 ). I can tell you it will be a challenge to everything you think you know. So, Thank you, Your efforts do not just benefit those you seek to help but also some of us at home. I wish you the best of luck with your experiment and will follow your post for any lessons you may be able pass on.

While it may be disturbing to watch a hawk eat a duck, it is even more disturbing to see a hawk actually kill the duck. On at least three occasions, I have watched a Northern Harrier in the process of drowning a White-billed Coot. It is rather creepy to watch the Coot struggling just under the surface and finally becoming still. I did see one Coot escape. I know it is the way of nature, and Coots aren't really cute, but it is still upsetting to watch. I would have thought that Mallards were too big for this. Maybe it was injured or sick?

G.Tom: No, I have made no such claims of 'purity'. In fact, I conducted a little research previously related to cotton burr compost and it was in some ways inconclusive. https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/1626234/pesticide-residues-in-cotton-burr-compost?n=34 In any case, the article you linked states, "It is estimated that as much as 65% of hazardous conventional cotton production ends up in our food chain." "Conventional cottonseed oil may be highly contaminated with pesticide residues..." No supporting evidence is offered. FIFRA requires that all pesticides undergo a certain amount of testing for safety. Not everyone agrees that this ensures safety in all respects, including me. But any use of a crop for food - including cottonseed for oil - has to be included as a potential exposure risk. Statements like the above seem to ignore the fact that testing and risk assessment (evaluation of the expected residue concentration and dose vs. toxicity of the chemical) have to be done. Simply saying that X food product may be highly contaminated (and therefore dangerous) without any consideration of actual data kind of irks me. That's all I'm saying. I'm not even claiming it's safe, but I do claim that it was someone's responsibility to consider it. It's almost like people just assume they've discovered some very basic angle that the regulatory system completely missed. For anyone interested, here's a good article from Food Safety Magazine explaining the registration and monitoring process. https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/magazine-archive1/december-2013january-2014/pesticide-residue-testing-of-food-ingredients-monitoring-for-compliance-and-safety/ Notably, in its monitoring program, "FDA found violative residues in 1.4 percent of 1,385 domestic food samples tested, in contrast to finding violations in 4.0 percent of 4,196 foreign food samples." This is 2009 data but at least demonstrates that someone is looking. EPA has a page on food safety including the Food Quality Protection Act: https://www.epa.gov/safepestcontrol/food-and-pesticides Our regulatory system has flaws. We all know it. But let's at least acknowledge that there is one, and take into account what it does, and find ways to improve it, rather than pretend everything out there is hazardous and that no one cares if the big bad corporations poison everyone.