Day 15: Wednesday July 12, 2023

 Well, the target temperature for today was between 145 and 150. This morning it was only at 120, 3 degrees cooler than it was at 9:00 last night.

Stephany came over and we did the changing of the straw and kneading of the sukumo. It is quite lovely - crumbly and dry this time. The bigger chunks just crumbled apart instead of having to be broken apart, and there were tiny hard chunks as well. So we decided it was finally time to add water, and we are hoping that the renewed moistness will help the temperature to go up.

We started at about 11:15 am. The temperature was still 120.

We worked on it for about an hour, spraying water periodically until it finally felt moist enough. Altogether we probably used between a pint and a quart of water. 

And then we carefully stuffed it all back in to the barrel 

and closed it up again at about 12:15 pm. Usually after the changing the temperature is in the low 80's. Today it was only 71.6, probably because we added the water. By 8:30 pm it was up to 76.1, so hopefully the temperature will continue to rise and will get up to where it is supposed to be. It is definitely composting, and the texture changes a little each time we open it up, so the temperature may not be something we need to worry about - it might just take longer? We shall see. 

The air temperature in the shop is staying between 70 and 85 or so when it was really hot outside, so that is right where it should be.