Saturday, February 4, 2012

Compost Life Cycle on Farm



This last week was the perfect example of the Compost Life Cycle that we have been working to develop for a few years. When we built the new onion, garlic and shallot bed we emptied the compost near the chicken coop into it. Today a new helper came and emptied both coops completely in three hours....awesome job!! The manure was piled next to the compost pile area. I still had the bags of compostable cups from Navitat (I was waiting for this day). I wanted to put the cups under a nice layer of hot chicken manure so in went the cups first, and then all the chicken manure moved to bury them. The next layer was from the goat pen that was just cleaned consisting of manure/alfalfa/straw mixture. Tucked the pile in by surrounding it with straw bales, and in order to save some water I am waiting for it to rain this week to give it a thorough soaking. For an added measure of heat (something new I am trying) after it rains, I am going to lay recycled sliding glass doors on top; they won't fit perfectly so there should be enough oxygen exchange. Once a month I will run my little tiller through it; keep it moist (doors should help with this too), and hopefully in about 4-6 months we will have another large batch of compost ready!! If I were to till it more often it would happen faster, but I know I won't get to it that often so I have multiple piles on the property. The new pile is being created by Filet and the new heads of beef coming soon. Thus one of the initial goals of being "compost material" independent has been attained and we no longer have to go and get materials or compost; nice money savings!!

1 comment:

  1. Hi there... Did this work? Did the cups really break down all the way?

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