This thread has so inspired me.
I have been what I thought was pretty good composter - after this I see I have been small-time (mostly kitchen, woodstove, yard & chicken-coop waste composting (for years). Not knocking what I have done, but am now inspired to go large ;)
Today while out walking I saw the guys in the big orange truck out trimming branches from the utility lines. Medium sized lightbulb goes on, and I approached them and said "You can leave the wood where it falls, I'll gather it" Guy replies "Sure. We'll chip the brush and leave the wood" I thought hey, that's even better.
I continue with my walk but I am thinking hard and so I turn around early and go back to talk to them again.
Me: (newly brave wanna-be-Forerunner) "So? Where do you dump your chipper?" Guy: "Anywhere we can find to dump it!" Paydirt - pardon the pun.
They do this run in the area throughout late summer and will bring it all to me :) They couldn't back into the snow by my shed today, but I expect they should be able to next week (considering the forecast). I better go take before photos!
I am so excited! Whodathunkit!? Neighbors are going to be bringing me more cow & horse poo too. I told them all about this post and the worried about smell etc... I explained it (well, I tried & it sounded good at the time) and now they'll see it.
It's a new day for compost in this neck of the woods - hoo-rah!

*wipes away tears of joy*

Now see how easy that was ?
Between a relatively unlimited supply of carbon, and an appreciable source of nitrogen, you're on the fast track, and odor will be a non-issue.

I wish I had to compete for the stuff in my area.

The sale barn has been absolutely overrun since early January and I'm barely keeping up hauling out an average of 17 tons a day. The trouble is, it's too muddy for me to get in where I need to dump the stuff.
Canton's piles aren't such a priority to get hauled off, there being no public nuisance issue, but they've got thousands of yards of material.
....and that's not counting all the smaller farms around that are waiting for me to get there.
Some days I wonder how laid back and simple life must be for normal, uninspired people.....

Those orange trucks do that here too, but there is actually a waiting list to get the chipped stuff. We live in the land of lots of mud and I think most people use it for pathways.

Ok I saw a link to this farm on another thread here on HT.


http://snakeroot.net/farm/FarmPix.shtml If you go half way down they show how the town brings them leaves every year, and that they say the town estimates it saves $3000 in tax money.

If you keep clicking you go onto their mulching page: http://snakeroot.net/farm/UsingMulches.shtml which then describes their brochure they hand out: http://snakeroot.net/farm/WeWantYourLeaves.shtml to get said compost/mulching material.



That does not see like a bad idea either to anyone else on this thread looking for a way to get more "good stuff".



Tim maybe you should have Lori set you up a website too... you will get more hits when people do an online search if you have blogs and forums all linking/pointing to a website. ;) You can spread the word farther and faster. :rock:





:D

I've tried to talk him into getting his own site... but he just won't listen:mad:
He explains this stuff so much better than I can.

I thought of this thread yesterday evening. My son cleaned out a space in his grandparents' barn to put the lamb his fiance is feeding out. The barn used to have horses. My SIL was very poor at cleaning out the stalls. So, there was a lot of manure, straw and hay in there.

After they cleaned the "junk" out and were off getting panels to build the sheep pen w/ I started taking out the manure. I was working as fast as I could and my husband came to help me. He asked what I wanted to do with it and I said put it on my herb bed and my flower beds. We cleaned out 6" of dry, composted manure.

I kept thinking, "Forerunner would be so proud of me!" LOL

I have a question, Forerunner. Last year we put the leaves we vacuumed up on our garden. Unfortunately these contained a lot of shag bark hickory and the hulls from the hickory nut trees. Our garden got SEVERELY stunted. Took me until July to figure out what had gone wrong.

Do you know if I compost those in a pile for long enough will the juglome cook out?

Thanks,

CS

It most certainly will.

The key is a hot, working pile.
You'll need enough material to build a pile about the size of two pick-up loads to get good, enduring heat. More is better.

Those old stall cleanings are priceless.
That rich, powdery stuff just goes with about any floral decor. :)

Well I can see my 2 compost piles(the snow melted) but still havent trudged through the snow to get to them. I sure hope they are nice and steamy underneath. No steam visible from the top.(might have too much carbon)

One more step towards radical/extreme composting: my "new" (very old) skidsteer loader. Just brought it home this morning after it endured a long trip from way up in Michigan. I have yet to fill the bucket with compost or bedding & manure, though. I need to do a little tuning-up first.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S5...03a%5B5%5D.jpg

It's not really a model 610 -- it's an M500, but that doesn't matter much at this point.

mudburn
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S5...03a%5B5%5D.jpg

100 men with shovels and wheelbarrels.

Never take that for granted and you'll do just fine.

Life would be simpler if we didn't have to be diesel mechanics, but there wouldn't be much compost made.

I always prefer to err on the side of carbon.
Carbon will eventually break down. It absorbs nitrogen, seems to seek it out.
Manure will turn to silage/sauerkraut if left unmixed. Smells interesting, but doesn't do much for the soil in that state.

Hi Everyone

Here's a different look at bulk composting with some info about some lab testing.

http://www.tuthillfarms.com/1/235/index.asp

Thanks Forerunner for all the great info.

BeaHold

Maybe you should just do it and tell him it's a "present". :heh:








Mudburn.... I think you should paint some flames on that puppy. :rock: It just screams for some "flair". :gaptooth:




;)

Looks like they've got it coming and going. Charge to drop off and charge to pick up. Sounds like a good business on top of being the right thing to do.

......and, they have a tub grinder.:grumble:

It has been a long, cold, wet winter.
I was able to catch up a bit on my hauling over the last few weeks, alternating loads between sale barn and municipal wood chip and leaf piles.
The frost has very recently gone out and there have been a couple of "frost boils" show up on our gravel road. These are like pockets of tooth-paste consistency clay/water that burst from beneath the previously functional and long-established road, and you can easily bury an entire tractor in one with little effort. The first incident wasn't too bad; I dropped the entire front quarter of one of my wagons into one....and was able to pull it out with just the bulldozer. The second time, in a different hole, right in the middle of the road..... it took the dozer chained to the tractor, and the backhoe chained to the dozer, to barely pull my heavy dump wagon out of the quagmire.
So.... I have ceased my hauling efforts and will be turning my attention toward pruning fruit trees and grape vines, setting out new grape clippings and preparing panels to be A-framed for the summer's tomato, pepper, cucumber, pea and bean crops.......until the road settles.

My last accumulations-- two large piles-- of compost from last summer and fall are decomposing nicely, and the slightest disturbance of the surface of those piles exposes thousands of worms in what was a sand and clay field a couple short years ago.....

Lori took a few pics of the piles, from different angles, with Matthew posing here and there for comic relief.
Our guest cabin can be seen in the background in this one.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_2818.jpg

To avoid creating a pond, I split the material into two piles as I built up.
Properly mixed, they won't leak much of their super concentrated compost tea, but there is evidence, after this last wet year, of some leaching.
With my new approach of building the piles around the center of the fields in which they will be spread, all such leaching of black gold will be ripped into the soil as the need arises, with zero loss of nutrient. Here is a shot of the two piles from the east.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_2819.jpg

A shot from the north, overlooking the river valley beyond.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_2816.jpg

A shot from the south, Matthew posing for depth and size, I think....
Note the heavy concentration of sawdust in the corner.....my carbon reserve bank.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_2805.jpg

A larger shot from the southwest, coming up the hill from the house and buildings, below.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_2804.jpg

There is always a steady flow of deceased livestock, seasonally increasing a bit as calving season progresses. This all came from one larger Angus farmer about 15 miles northeast of us. There are two full grown cows that died in calving, and over a half dozen separate calves that couldn't make it in this cold world. It looks like quite a loss, and would be. But the man does support a breeding herd of 370 cows......
Note the piles of wood chips in the background, waiting to do their part for odor elimination and nutrient absorption.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_3664.jpg

:bow:

Freya, you just couldn't let this thread rest, could you.:bdh:

Well, while we're here... an interested couple got with me privately to inquire about my feed mill that I use to grind bones. They wanted a picture of the hammers for a reference as to what they might look for in a bone grinder of their own.
Now, the last thing I did with that grinder was shred some not-quite-dry-enough leaves as an experiment for sawdust substitute for the toilet, and, well, there's still leaves in there.:whistle:

I got a couple decent shots anyhow. The knives are two or two and a half inches wide, six or eight inches long and maybe five/sixteenths of an inch thick.
They swing on a square frame assembly that gives them a little more distance from center, hence speed at the impact point.

Don't mind the, umm, leaves. I promise I'll clean those out some day soon.

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_3716.jpg

http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/q...T/100_3717.jpg

I could not in good conscience allow it.


:stirpot:

How did the leaves work for your sawdust toilet? We're always looking for new things to add to ours. :)

We don't have a huge supply of leaves, but I think they might be nice. Right now, we have a goodly supply of spoilt hay we got last year for free.

There is a custom cabinet shop in town, and the owner lets us have as much sawdust as we want.

It should be interesting when my brother and nephew come to visit next week. <shaking head> I think my brother thinks I've lost it. Either that, or he thinks, "Goofy hippies." :rotfl:

Any carbon source will work for toilet cover, but the finer consistencies work the best.
The finely shredded leaves were great. I just needed to let them dry a little before grinding. There is a process by which "leaf mould" can be made from not-too-wet of leaves. Rodale's composting books address this topic at length. The process and result are represented each year in the deciduous forests where, the deeper you dig in the ever accumulating/ever decomposing leaf bed, the finer you will find the consistency of the leaves as they decompose back to timber soil.

I know its not compost related :frypan: but

Forerunner, you could take those leaves and pelletize them for heat in the winter also. Although you probably aren't lacking any wood on that beautiful peice of land.

It's too bad there isn't a reasonable way to capture the methane produced from all the composting.

Proper aerobic composting shouldn't produce ANY methane. Methane is produced as a result of anaerobic fermentation of organic material, like in swamps.

I let a compost pile get too wet in the middle (LOL) and am pretty sure it produced a little methan for a bit, but well-managed compost won't.

Indeed, it is not the process of composting, but the materials that I drag in every day that would work well for making methane, were I set up to make such use.
The manure, wood chips, leaves, grass clippings, etc. would all blend beautifully in a digester.

If you get bored, that can be your NEXT project: a digester that produces biogas for generating your electricity needs. You can send me a check as a token of your eternal gratitude for the idea, lol.

It was a good day for extreme composting.

I headed off to the sale barn this morning with my truck and trailer, intending to haul several loads. With the trailer, I figured I could haul a little more than twice what I could with the truck alone. Earlier this week I worked out a method of unloading the trailer that didn't involve extensive use of a scoop shovel.

The method I employed lets me roll the load off of the trailer. I attached several 2x6 boards to two logging chains (I used lag screws). This is laid on the floor of the trailer, and the material is loaded on top. To unload, the chains are hooked to the back of the trailer while two more chains are connected at the front. I attach these chains to my tractor and pull toward the back of the trailer. If it all works right, the material rolls off the back of the trailer, leaving only a small amount that fell between the 2x6s which is easily removed with a scoop shovel. Then, the 'false floor' is put back in place for the next load.

Here are some photos of the process:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...005%5B8%5D.jpg
All hooked up and ready to unload.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...009%5B4%5D.jpg
Starting to roll off the trailer.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...075%5B4%5D.jpg
There it goes!

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...085%5B4%5D.jpg
This is what's left (there was a little extra left at the back of the trailer because the chains came unhooked at the back).

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...130%5B4%5D.jpg
Putting the 'false floor' back in place (photo taken from atop the material yet to be dumped from the truck).

I hauled three loads this morning. I would've hauled more, but I had an appointment to look at a loader tractor (which I bought). I figured in those three loads that I hauled in about 14 tons of material.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...136%5B4%5D.jpg
This is my pile from this morning. Well, there was some from trying out my unloading method earlier this week.

When I arrived at the sale barn, the guy who gets paid to haul off the material had just finished loading his tandem axle dump truck and was ready to leave. I told him I would be glad for him to haul as much of the material as possible (all of it actually) for me. He was more than willing and hauled five loads today.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_shAezIdYWkc/S6...141%5B4%5D.jpg
The younguns enjoying climbing on the piles from the five dump truck loads.

I'm pleased with today's acquisition. I still need to locate a good source of carbon. There is lots of small saw mills around here, but the local Kingsford plant sucks up all of the saw dust for a 60 mile radius.

mudburn

So ... Tim, If Ernie has to take/retrieve livestock from your area about the weekend after Father's Day, want to catch a ride (you and Lori and the chilluns) with him back to our place for the Homesteading Weekend??

This is the one that I promised to both Carla & Wendy to keep going every year. They were both pretty insistant that summer that we do so, I know why now ...

Nice noodle work on the "compost burrito" method of unloading. I like it. :thumb: Good looking pile too.

I gotta get busy with some composting.

double post! Oops!

I do have plenty of wood.
The bulldozing that I do periodically for neighbors turns up even more.
We cut dead wood off township roads, as well.

If I did anything alternative with heat, it would be more with the heating power of compost.....and, maybe methane, seeing as it's so renewable, and clean.

That said, I do greatly appreciate my wood heat.

Traveling by tractor for hours at a time lends one to endless contemplation about a great many things. Hauling organic materials over the last ten years has given me a LOT of such time.
The subjects of "waste" management, food production, general industry and making provision for the basic needs of mankind are usually on the front burner as I make my way through each day of labor.

I have long envisioned a small, cooperative village...... made up of either extended family or just very like-minded and dedicated men and their families.
There is always industry in my ponderings about this village.
There is a sawmill and a gristmill, both powered by the large creek that flows nearby. There are several men who keep cattle, some for dairy and some for beef. There are private and community gardens.

It is not necessarily a closed loop community, but it could be at a moment's notice. All food, water, clothing and building materials can be procured from the land through those who know how to cultivate it.
The town generates no "waste".

All sewage could be disposed of through a fairly conventional sewage system, and collected at the village methane digester.
The methane could run the one large generator that supplies power for the town.
The spent slurry would then be mixed with the town's wood and landscape wastes, and composted.....

The backup power system could be steam powered, run off of all the town's potential combustibles. Sawmill slabs, brush and slash grindings, paper, wood....with a properly designed burner, even plastics and other textiles could be used to generate electricity.
There could also be a hydro-plant run by that creek, complete with a reservoir for fishing and recreation.....
Overlapping contingency plans make for impervious strength.

The cattle wastes, garden residues, municipal carbon and nitrogen wastes, etc. could all be composted in a community venture or everyman his own, or both.

From such a firm foundation, a village could venture into any direction it wanted....i.e., manufacturing, invention, agrarian, tourism.
Once a water system is developed, waste is eliminated, food production is secured and energy means are established, all in such sustainable fashion,
utopia could follow.

The only obstacle to such a permanent and working setting in which families can raise successive generations to thrive on this earth is the long antecedent malignant nature of man.

The only way to conquer that obstacle is for every man to esteem his neighbor more highly than himself.

Mudburn, your sense of innovation leaves little excuse for those not diesel endowed to sit longer idle. The simplest of technologies will, in the end, far outweigh all labor ever accomplished by complex machines. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Only after the way is set and the course is begun will further and seemingly greater opportunity present itself.
Men were created to act.
It seems as though a few of us radicals need to wake up our brethren to that high calling..... not to mention raise our sons and daughters to follow boldly in our footsteps.

......and, you do need a carbon source. Have you considered a small pto woodchipper for your tractor ?
I see you have an abundance of brush. Jean Paine made his own tractor-mounted woodchipper and powered it with his own methane..... and made huge piles of compost. Are there any towns close where you could get leaves, grass clippings ?
Any food-related industries that produce a carbon waste ?

So shall I pack my bags? We all coming to your place? You gotta share your compost though :)

I don't know how many will be able to make the trip, but Ernie and I have been discussing this. Ernie mentioned that he would like to sing for y'all while we're there and that I should do a talk about composting.

I don't have the creek.:mad:

You come up with the place and the people, and I'll come help you all set it up.

Mudburn....

Have I told you that I LOVE looking at your pictures?
It is so cool to see someone else doing what Tim (forerunner) does, and what our family does.
I feel like I was there, behind the camera the whole time :thumb:
Keep posting! And keep taking lots of pictures!

Thanks, Bama! This method will work with a small trailer or pickup, too. I used my tractor to roll the material off, but it is possible to hook the chains to a tree or other object that won't easily move and drive forward, leaving the load behind. So, by all means, get busy! :walk:

mudburn