Name: The Humanure Hacienda
Location: Pennsylvania
Years: 2001-present
Founded by: Joe Jenkins & family
The Humanure Hacienda is a structure for composting human waste that was built by Joe Jenkins and his family for their personal use. It is located in the backyard of their Pennsylvania home. Known primarily as the author of The Humanure Handbook, Joe Jenkins is one of the leading advocates for the use of humanure in America. This book is a guide to implementing humanure systems, and it provides all the necessary information and procedures to get started, as well as ample reasons why one should use humanure in the first place. In Joe Jenkins’ backyard, he constructed a two-part humanure composting structure that he nicknamed the “Humanure Hacienda”. There are two twin composting bins that are filled with humanure; the family carries the waste out to the hacienda in buckets and dumps it in. However, only one bin is filled up at a time, and they are filled up in alternating years so that one side will always be aging so as to be soon ready for use in the garden, while the other side will be filling up on a daily basis. Jenkins has posted many pictures of the Humanure Hacienda as well as detailed descriptions of its functionality on his website so as to publicize this system and encourage people to implement a similar system in their own backyard.
In effect, Jenkins is practicing what he preaches, and I think that is refreshing to see. As a leading advocate of humanure, he should definitely be using it himself, so I am glad that he has found a successful way to do so and is widely publicizing it. This shows people that anyone can use humanure; it is a simple system that can be placed in your backyard, and the benefits are numerous.
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