......and a little communing, when no one is looking. :)

as there are no more formal facilities on my farm as of yet, I can assure you I frequently add the number 1 and number 2 most beneficial and free composting materials.

I was there is January, you had cut back the bank on the far side to find solid ground and had started pushing up dirt. The near side you hadn't done anything with yet. It looks more like garrison Dam to me.

http://i48.tinypic.com/o083fn.jpg

An earthen dam with a road across it.

If you are going to go extreme…

http://i49.tinypic.com/ix5c9f.jpg

This is Phelps Mill in Otter Tail County, Minnesota. I don’t know how to do a link, so here it is the hard way.
http://www.co.otter-tail.mn.us/phelpsmill/

Here is the wheel for the mill. The lumber for the water chute has long disappeared. I believe it used to have two wheels, one for the brick part and one for the stick built.

http://i50.tinypic.com/33vni4w.jpg

One more image just for fun. I bet you wish you had this when building your dam.
http://i45.tinypic.com/5v56c4.jpg

Oh, hey the link worked, cool.

A page or two ago FR made mentioned of getting a load a day or even a load a week to build a compost pile. I thought I would do a load a day on the day I wasn’t working. Since I think I will be getting 10 pick-up loads of manure this spring, I need 10 loads of carbon, and my only source is the township compost pile in the fall/ winter.

First day when good. Second day I got delayed in town and it was pitch black by the time I got out of town, so no load that day. Today I was going to take two loads to make up for the one I missed. It was freezing rain this morning so I worked in the garage. This afternoon it took me about a half hour to shift the truck into four wheel drive as the linkage is broke and I have to craw under the truck. I could only get it into four low, the township pile is only about 4 miles away, so off I went. MAN 25 MPH IS SLOW!!! After two load the day was mostly shot for starting a new project, so back under the truck for another half hour trying to get it into four high. I could shift it into 4 low, natural, and 2 wheel drive by hand, but for the life of me I could not get 4 high. It wouldn’t have been so bad if, it was a half hour of being under the truck, but it was a half hour of wet concrete and make a shift, get back up in the truck to see if the indicator light was in 4x4, back under the truck, repeat, repeat , repeat, repeat, repeat…. I ended up with 4 pick-up loads today.

Loading at the township pile
http://i47.tinypic.com/2pzbgr5.jpg

Four loads at home.
http://i48.tinypic.com/kboq5w.jpg

You are a better man than me, Studhauler. Remarkable persistence.

Yeah and, gee thanks for the hydro pics.

Now I ain't gunna sleep for a week. :indif:

Nooooooooooooooo! :runforhills:

Ewwwwwww :yuck: Another one lost to that wily Poopman!:sob:
Stay strong people, stay strong :thumb:

May the urge be with you. :thumb:

I need to read the thread more often, won't stop smiling for a week...

I feel silly, but just have to ask. I was advised that fresh milk that is a bit old is good for the garden, at least out of season. If this is so, may I ask why that would be ?

It's calcium in soluble form. That means that it is ready for plants to be able to use it.

Martin

With that being said, could I use it on the house plants or garden starts, and if so should it be diluted ? And the cream factor ?

Use on house plants would depend upon requirements for each species. For example, I would never use it on African violets which do best in an acidic soil mix. On the other hand, cacti and succulents can handle alkaline soil and not be averse to a drink of milk now and then. Cream content would be no factor other than as protein to feed the soil bacteria. It would have no immediate affect on the plants, beneficial or otherwise.

Martin

What Martin said but in addition, the sugars feed the soil bacteria. I read in some organic magazine, maybe Acres USA, that a farmer used a few gallons of milk/acre diluted in water (can't remember the ratio but it seems it was very dilute, 1 to 20? 1 to 50?). He routinely sprayed this on pastures and felt that he had transformed the soil. Unfortunately, he had no non milk treated pastures as a test control to measure how much the milk had done and what his other practices did.

The general ratio is 1 gallon of milk to 20 gallons of water. There is was quite a study done on it as I recall, but I can't seem to find the link just now. If you Google milk as fertilizer, you'll get several sites talking about it.
If you're interested, there is also quite the lengthy discussion on the Keeping a Family Cow forum on this topic.

In the last 7 days I got 16 loads of leaves from the township pile.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2ez07r7.jpg
Look, there is compost tea running down the side of my truck while I am loading at the township pile. This stuff either gets burned or pushed over the edge of a hill, so I liberated it from a life of no good. It was like taking candy form a baby, except the tears were tears of joy from me.



http://i48.tinypic.com/65oj8g.jpg
Here are piles one and two. The one in front of the truck was all my lawn clipping and leaves from this fall. I mow 5 acres. It was at least 3 times as big as the pile behind the truck, when it was made in October. The pile behind the truck is two load of leaves that probably will not compost but just get tilled into the garden.



http://i49.tinypic.com/jqtic1.jpg
This pile is pile number three, It has the load of manure that I finally got. I don’t think it will compost this winter as it is frozen and has to much dirt in it. I just put three load of leaves on top of it to add some mass and hopefully a blanket of warmth if the manure does its trick.



http://i46.tinypic.com/wvoidk.jpgThis is pile number four; it has 10 loads of leaves from the township pile. It is also just a pile of leave / carbon, waiting for next spring when hopefully I can get 10 pick-up loads of manure.

I find that I can get the nastiest frozen material heating if I get one loader bucket out of a hot, working pile to place in the core of the nasty.....unless, of course, the C/N ratio is already way out of whack.

Humm... "Dad, can I barrow your tractor again?"

Well done !!!

How much grey water can say a 10 ft by 10 ft 5 ft high take without a problem? I use no antibacterial soaps.

I ran a garden hose on my pile number one for about an hour and half. It was all dry leaves and dry grass. It was not composting, it was dead before I watered it. Afterwards the temp went way up and is composting very nicely.

If you want your compost pile to be an ongoing graywater "disposal", spread the water rather than continually saturating one area.
Build the pile bigger. :)
Learn to use as little water as possible in the house, which is economically sound, anyway.

In drought conditions, it'll be a snap.
If you're in wet areas, tarp the pile so that the graywater is all that makes it through.

You may have to guinea pig a bit to find the balance.
If you develop saturated areas and a continual ooze at the bottom of the pile, yer not gunna be happy with your finished product, of the lingering aroma.

Ten gallons a week isn't much.

Agreed.

Ten gallons per week would not be a problem.

Hmmm, it might not smell so bad if you'd just stop all that darn "communing":frypan: :spinsmiley:

just as long as you're not talking about your vodka habit

I've never heard of this person. Is she someone you used to "groove" to?:pound:

BTW, I wish you and your family a very Blessed Christmas :-)

Geez....what a scrooge. :indif:

Where's your festive spirit, already ? :smack:

ETA:

Imagine, if you will, several hundred billion thermophilic microbes, locking arms and swaying in unison to a festive rendition of "One Hundred Bottles of Ruskie Standart on the Wall".

:)

Used to ? Who's talkin' in the past, here ?


Thank you for the kind sentiments, all the same, though, in all honesty, around here, no one day stands out from the rest for unbridled, festively riotous frivolity. :shrug:

Merry Christmas and Happy Composting to all.

Here's some photos of my newly assembled from scrap steel compost screener. I want to screen compost so that I can make potting soil for the greenhouse projects. In addition, as discussed previously, I have 5 big piles (30 - 50 ft diameter and 8 - 10 ft high) of pine stumps waiting to burn and 2 more larger piles that have already gone through 3 burn cycles that have left me with lots of char, ash, and sand mixed into the piles. the piles usually burn for about 2 weeks and then I put them out by covering with sand because of my travel schedule.

In order to get this field ready to plant in a couple of months, I need to separate the fines from the piles. the fines will get spread and disced under and the larger pieces will either go through another burn or be added to the nearest compost piles. So to separate everything, my welder neighbor and i have built this.

The idea is that I'll take the FEL and dump a scoop of burnt pile onto the high side of the screen, with the fines falling thru and the larger stuff rolling off the back. I haven't had a chance to test it out yet; my neighbor finished it after I left for Xmas fam visits. I'm worried we used too fine a screen, might have to make the screen table closer to level and even add an engine to vibrate the screen. We'll see, will post results later.

I'm looking rather forward to seeing how your screen works.

I'm also being thankful for deep ravines around the edges of the fields that need stumps and debris shoved into them to prevent erosion around these hilly parts. :huh:

Now if we all just had our homemade tub grinders up and running. :indif:

Well I think she needs a little more slope. The only problem I have is some material seems to catch on mine. I have quarter inch hardawre cloth on mine.

My holes are about twice that size. It isn't exactly like normal expanded metal but is similar, the openings are shaped more like a huge cheese grater. Was used by a quarry in an industrial sized trommel. I would have been happier to get the whole trommel but it had already been disassembled and parted out by the time I found the pieces.

The horizontal bar of the A frame was made so that we can drill more holes to shorten the horizontal piece to increase the slope. My bud and I were arguing as to whether more or less slope is right. Will have to test it to see. I wanted about 45 degrees but since I wasn't there and he has the welder, he won the first round.

The slope has a lot to do with what will fall through the screen.

If you do not have enough slope the screen will need a little vibration help. I usuall just bang on the frame a little. I also have to take the occasional stuff that gets caught to keep stuff going down the screen. Forerunners tumbler is really more the way to go. But right now I have more time than money. Did I say I was cheeeeeep? Yep I did.

Forerunner has a tumbler?!? As in a trommel? Are there photos somewhere in this thread or do I get to blast him unmercifully for failing us all?

And yeah, I was cheap too. I gotta admit.

Yep beneies of reading the whole shebang. I will make one maybe next year. For right now my slant screen will do.

I have read the whole thread, but that was months ago. FR - can you point me to the photos of your trommel?