Posts Tagged ‘manure compost’
New Bin
What does it say about a person when the most exciting thing in a day is a new composting bin? The plastic compost bin for kitchen food scraps, which we bought when we moved here almost 13 years ago, has succumbed to the ravages of UV radiation and the destructive forces of relentless raccoons.
We picked a different version to replace it, and the company that manufactures it is Canadian and has the word ‘green’ in its name, so no wonder I’m feeling so giddy about it.
Though the confirmation email for our order didn’t show up as expected, Cyndie reached a human support person who apologized and assured her it was out for delivery.
After reviewing the helpful information in the manual and assembling the bin yesterday, Algreen is now on my preferred vendor list. I’m embarrassed over how excited I am to generate more coffee grounds, eggshells, and vegetable scraps to feed the new bin.
While I was in compost mode, I ventured over to the manure compost piles and set about transferring one of the finished piles to our storage location near the labyrinth. That is another two-for-one exercise, as it frees up space in the compost area and replenishes the amount available for immediate use.
One thing I have learned about allowing my piles of compost to rest on the bare ground, surrounding trees are not bashful about reaching up into the piles with their fibrous root structures. When scooping up the compost from the bottom of the mounds, it becomes a battle of tines hooking on thickets of growth that don’t give in easily.
A tree’s gotta eat. I don’t blame them since I’m the one who put all that rich nutrition where they could reach it.
It’s actually a reflection of how slowly we operate around here. The pile by the labyrinth gets dug into very infrequently, giving the trees plenty of time to establish a hearty web of fine root fibers. At the compost area, I’m guilty of leaving old piles that have gone cold undisturbed for longer than is optimum.
If I were to get around to establishing composted horse manure as a cash crop, my processes would get much more attention. Early on in our adventure of transitioning from suburbanites to country folk, we envisioned marketing our special concoction of “soul soil” from the rich compost we were getting.
In reality, I am moving in the other direction now and can often be found throwing scoops of fresh manure over the paddock fences into the pastures instead of collecting the precious material for the compost piles.
Our food compost and manure compost primarily feed Cyndie’s gardens with enough left over to fulfill the requests of a few friends and family who ask for an occasional bag full.
Yet, still, I find myself excited like a kid at Christmas over the process and having a brand new compost bin. It doesn’t define me, but this probably reveals something about my nature, I expect.
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Talkin’ Sh✴︎t
Not really talkin’ shit, but that was an irresistible two-word title. More accurately, I’m talking compost, but since it is made from horseshit, that’s not far off. In the many years that I have been experimenting with ways to compost and reuse the horse manure produced by the herds living with us, I’ve developed a pretty reliable system.
The main variable that I have neglected to control effectively is the moisture level of my piles. The area I have chosen for composting piles is not covered by a roof. If it rains too much, my piles can get so wet it disrupts the thermophilic decomposition.
My composting methods are far short of academic control of the carbon/nitrogen ratio or covering the piles with a tarp to control moisture. Honestly, the primary goal is to reduce the volume of manure by getting it to break down. The fact that it produces wonderfully fertile soil in the end is a welcome bonus.
By simply piling the manure and turning it as needed, I’ve been achieving desired results.
Throughout the summer months, I create individual piles in the spot just behind the barn, visible in the photo above. Yesterday, I moved out the last of the season’s composted piles, leaving two active piles in the back and plenty of space to dump more if needed over winter.
Once the winter freeze sets in, I look for alternate places to dump the wheelbarrow since the manure piles won’t break down and shrink, and there have been years I’ve run out of space. One place I have resorted to has begun to produce more impressive black dirt over time than any of my individual piles ever have.
There is a spot in the large paddock where the end of the buried drainage tile from the spigot in the barn comes to daylight. After trying several unsuccessful tricks to keep the horses from stomping around in the area where the drain tile is close to the surface, I got the brilliant idea of covering it with a mound.
The most readily available fill material we have is horse manure, so I piled up frozen wheelbarrows full during winter months and left it throughout the year to settle. The horses can’t leave anything alone so their curious kicking around on the pile through the summer helps break it up and conveniently aerates it.
Every time they mess with it, I rake it back into shape and make sure the deepest part of the mound stays over the drain outlet. This week, I’ve started adding to the mound again because the piles in the composting area are bound to stop being active soon, and mornings have been freezing the manure.
Adding fresh manure to the pile made for a sharp contrast to how very wonderfully soil-like the previous seasons’ dumpings have become. If I keep this up, that little mound will become a fine horse-compatible rise offering safe cover to the drain outlet.
Ain’t that the shit!
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Final Details
We are at that point in the story where the main characters are working multiple lists simultaneously in preparation for their adventure vacation as tourists visiting Iceland. Test packing happened Monday night. All systems are a go.
Now I am in the second-guessing mode. I packed once, but now I’ve been into the bag a few times to get toiletries or grab something out of my carry-on bag. I also thought of a couple of things to add. Will I remember to put everything back? Will I remember where I packed everything? No. No, I won’t. Based on past experience, I have a terrible time recalling what nifty little pocket I’ve stashed certain things, thinking it’s such a clever location.
Meanwhile, I’m ticking away at the property work I want to finish before we go.
One valuable task that is less visible than others is the management of manure composting. It has been so wet this year, I’ve had a tough time keeping the piles active. As a result, I can’t move them out as often as I’d like to make room to create a new pile for the never-ending supply of fresh manure. Since we are going to be gone for almost two weeks, I wanted to provide ample space for our horse sitters to dump the manure they will be cleaning up every day.
Yesterday, I crossed that goal off my list. New space is achieved.
That was much more rewarding than my fruitless attempt to dig again in search of the buried power cable. That project will be waiting for me when we return.
I did successfully complete the trimming of grass beneath the back pasture fence line with enough gas left over to also clean up a portion of our trails. Then I mowed the front and backyard around the house.
This morning, I need to drive to Hudson for a windshield replacement before returning home to finish off the last of the grass cutting. If there is something unfinished after that, it will need to wait until we return stateside.
For the record, last night Cyndie was very busy finding new things to bring and rethinking what was going into her suitcase. It served to heighten my second-guessing about what I “test packed” the other night.
In my opinion, managing the manure composting area is a lot easier than packing for a trip to visit Iceland.
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Rewarding Progress
We started the day with some group exercise, walking the horses, in pairs, uphill and down, but the main event of the day yesterday was a divide and conquer effort on the ranch. I’d say we conquered. On top of that, we did so under a time constraint, because we had Cyndie’s 40th high school class reunion to attend for dinner back in our old stomping’ grounds an hour’s drive away.
My main goal was to tend to the manure composting area, which was getting overfull and in dire need of rotation. With time limited, we decided to just transfer a large portion of the old piles to a secondary storage location and dump them in one big pile for distribution later.
That plan led to selecting and preparing a new spot for a pile of (mostly) composted manure. The place we settled on, near Cyndie’s wild flower garden on the north side of our driveway, was all tall grass and weeds. We are a little sensitive about weeds right now, and I did intend to eventually knock down the growth in the pasture area over there, so my focus suddenly shifted to using the diesel tractor and the brush cutter to mow the entire area.
That’s a big project, and more than I planned to bother with at that time.
Cyndie volunteered to take on relocating the piles of manure on her own while I mowed —no small task— and we were off. That area on the north side of the driveway has a lot of pine trees that create quite an obstacle course for the big tractor. It turns the project into a busy process of maneuvering, offering very little physical or mental rest in the tractor seat.
I only picked off one T-post along the fence line, and hit one large hidden rock, but the number of pine branches abused was too high to count. To her credit, Cyndie hit a grand slam of progress in moving ALL of the oldest piles from our composting area.
Delilah got the short end of things for the day, as we had little time to smother her with attention before serving her dinner in her kennel and hitting the road to visit our past. The reunion dinner was located a stone’s throw from our old Eden Prairie home, at the Bent Creek golf club.
I graduated a year after Cyndie, so I was attending as a spouse, but high school lasts 4 years with multiple grade classes, so I knew many of these people as well as I know my classmates. Some were neighbors from when I grew up, others were siblings of people in my class, so it was just as fun for me to visit and catch up with folks as it was for Cyndie.
I had an additional agenda to collect information from the planners and check the number of attendees to use as reference in planning the reunion for my own graduating class, next year at this time. The first meeting for our planning committee has just been scheduled to occur a couple weeks into August.
Holy cow, August starts tomorrow! My class reunion is just a blink away.
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Relative Something 