Manure is getting tough to come by here. There is a large retiree population in town and they have discovered (Or always knew) how well their gardens and lawns do when dressed with manure.

I can't fault 'em for that but they have made it tougher to find a steady supply of manure. A riding stable has started selling their stall cleanings and a rabbit farm sells theirs by the bag. I have one steady supply of horse stall clean outs as well as my own animals but I would really like to find more.

At least it's getting used for a purpose and not wasted. When lawn mowing weather gets here I have several lawn care guys that bring me all their clippings so things will be looking up then.

How right you are, my stepson has a landscaping business and he brings us several loads of grass and then leaves a season, it is great, and for our two gardens enough compost along with our house compost and chicken house clean-outs.

Green grass clippings and brown/browning leaves make very serviceable stand-alone.......but chicken scrapings to boot ?

*wipes a tear of happiness*

Pitchers, perchance........ Candy ?

Really Forerunner, 177 pages?
You need to sell this as an e-book.

Or just donate it to posterity.........

:)

Too bad you can't get any politicians fer yer hills...

The fat lady ain't sung yet, either........ :heh:

My pile is pretty well buried and blocked by snow piles. Each week I take out a 5 gallon bucket or two of kitchen scraps and coffee grounds from work. I use a shovel or fork to get down past the frozen cap to where there are a few warm spots.... Looking forward to some warmer days. Attachment 43742

My compost pile this year is infested with grub worms and pill bugs. Any ideas to get rid of them? We have about another 4 weeks and then it will be time to sift and spread in the garden. Last year the pill bugs were eating off the stems and stalks of everything.

Time to call in the chickens.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Anybody know anything about compost power which uses heat from your compost pile to heat a building? I'm thinking of trying it for my shop. We have lines in the floor for heat which means all I need to buy is the plumbing parts to circulate the heat. I have a bunch of 3/4 pex pipe from my old watering system for my pasture so that's cheap enough. I would base my plans off of www.compostpower.org

I posted on this thread a few months ago. I'm a dairy farmer and finding a place and a way to turn my piles is more of a problem than finding material. The wheels are turning on a project we're looking at which will convert our free stall barn into a compost bedded pack. I fell in love with the idea in 2008 when we considered building a new barn. Finances decided otherwise. With a compost bedded pack you turn the pile every day with a cultivator/plow or a rototiller. If managed correctly the pile should start to compost. New bedding (sawdust is best, other bedding must be chopped finely) is added when the pack starts to stick to the cows. The problems with such a system is that you need 100 sq/ft per cow which means a larger building than a free stall barn. The other problem is that you use much more bedding which adds cost. The benefits are increased animal production, fewer feet problems, lower cull rate and an alternative way to handle waste storage. We need to work out the details and come up with a plan and costs for the project.

I believe the idea of compost heat to be very sound and sustainable.
Once the costs of creating the closed loop were absorbed, interesting economic benefits would surface, some which were not even foreseen........
Might you be able to replace the sawdust with baled corn stalks from your own acreage ?
Tub grinders aren't cheap, per se, but the cost of a bale grinder would shortly be offset by the savings on sawdust and trucking.......and that bale grinder can mix feed as well as grind bedding carbon.....
Then there would be the fertilizer and microbe value on the land.....

Mmmmmmm........... Whole darned concept makes my mouth water. :indif:

Do you have a tmr mixer? You can grind the corn stalks with that. Or straw of any sort. But a rotor grinder oh yeah make my head spin and get me all hot and sweaty! Ask my dh talk grinders or tmr mixers and I'm pudding.

bmvf- I have been reading up on this as well. I would like to make a pile to heat our greenhouse next winter, and possibly a second pile out by the barn to try to add a bit of heat to my chicken coop.

I built a chicken house on the south end of my barn......south-facing window array.....
Poured concrete perimeter foundation four feet deep to create a pit effect.
Room is approximately 10x26 feet.
I filled the pit with sawdust, about three feet deep, and let the birds in to poop, spill water, waste a bit of feed, etc. to the effect that they live on a four foot deep, enclosed compost pile.
They seem to appreciate the scratch and peck potential, and there is never a shortage of loose material to spread around asparagus and strawberry plants.

Ok so I have read the whole thread and have been bitten by the compost bug...

We recently (October 2014) moved from a 1/10th acre rented lot in S. Louisiana to purchasing 5 acres in N Mississippi.
So far I have layered oak leaves under a rabbit hutch...
Plus I'm building up my carbon reserves... So far I have a 5'x 10'x 5' snow fenced area of oak leaves piled up waiting for some N !
I figure if nothing else I can use some grass clippings come spring to mix into it.
Oh yeah and have already disposed of several trapped possums In the small pile under the rabbit hutch. No smell at all!

PS. I "commune" with the rabbit hutch pile at least once per day..haha

Good to have you aboard, Lennard. :)

Sounds like you've got your priorities straight. :thumb:

Congrats on the land upgrade........

The cost to get my my compost power system running should be under $1000. Maintenance and other costs would be very low considering the closed loop could be reused. If I have enough pex pipe on hand I won't need to buy that. However, I'm doubting that I need 900 feet of pipe inside the compost pile as the website says. I only need to raise the temp in my shop to 55-60 degrees.

In regards to chopping bedding, I have a tub style TMR mixer with knives. It does a decent job of cutting balage or hay into size but there needs to be weight so the blade can cut. I can throw a bale of hay or straw into the mixer and process it to use in a pen but I can't process it small enough to use in a compost bedding pack. Also, I only grow forage on my acres so I don't have corn fodder or straw from grain crops to bale and use for bedding. All my bedding needs to be bought in.

What is your cheapest/most plentiful source of carbon, and what is the approximate cost per ton/ yard ?

I get what they call animal bedding which is wooden skids that are chopped. The chips are then screened for mulch and the smaller stuff is used for bedding. I get that for $45 a yard. It works very well in freestalls and it keeps bedding packs dryer than straw bedding.

I could use green sawdust from a large local sawmill but the experts say that using green sawdust in a compost pack for dairy cows isn't a good idea.

I'd be interested to hear why the experts say that of green sawdust.

Do you have any specifics or a link to your source for this ?

Now I'm genuinely curious.

If I remember correctly what I have read about the green sawdust is due to the moisture and gasses given off by the drying saw dust also the bacteria. Here's a link for you Tim.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...-uSLRa5P58T3Gw

I was thinking moisture and maybe tree species issues until they had a chance to neutralize somewhat.
I supposed if one is working with an enclosed area, gasses could be an issue.
Some logs do saw dryer than others, and there's always good ventilation.
I suppose there is why I'm not cut out for commercial livestock production.

Just leave me the leftovers and the rough ground........

Green sawdust is higher in bacteria than dried sawdust.

Working with cattle has its challenges. Obviously cattle cannot tell you when they feel sick or have an ache or pain. A good cattleman will see signs of problems and check the cow out. Hopefully he sees the problem early, makes a correct diagnosis, and treats the problem correctly. This is tough for anyone. Often I know there is a problem when milking. This cow doesn't have the milk she should or she limps, so I catch her and figure out what's wrong.

The easiest thing to do is prevent these things from happening. This includes taking care of cows during the most stressful period of their lives, calving, which then leads into the most demanding period of their lives, milk production, which leads into another important period of their lives, milk production plus calf gestation. Bedding is very important because bacteria easily can get to the money maker, the udder and the teat end. A mastitis infection caused by bacteria is often mild but the serious cases can lead to dead quarters (teats), pregnancy abortion and even death. I've had a bad run of serious mastitis cases this past month. In 5 cases 2 are complete cures, 2 were culled because of total milk loss, and one died. Interestingly, the one that died is almost completely gone in my compost pile save for the bones. I know because I added another mortality to the pile this morning and turned the first cow.

Sorry to get off topic, often when I talk farming people like to hear it!

Oh, not too far off topic......

My best friend is a natural dairy man over in Missouri......

My cousin up north of Sterling, Illinois was the last of three generations to milk a hundred seventy head with the two huge barns for square bales, two huge silos.....the works, old school.
They hauled manure out to an old gravel pit on the property, every day.......and had what was likely the biggest compost/manure pile I had ever seen until beginning my own ventures......

And, I've been hand milking anywhere from one to four Jerseys, off and on, since I was 13.

:)

Here she is.



.

.......and now we're milking her daughter, and a gift from the Missouri herd.

:)

Well, I re stacked and moved the pile, mixing in some bone meal with beneficial nematodes and DE. After watering and a few days, the bug population is down 75%. I have one of those long stem thermometers that is saying 125 degrees inside the pile. How hot should it get?

125 is a good start.

155 is about maximum desirable, and 5 degrees either side of that is doable.

Keep us posted on that temp over the next few days/weeks, as that sort of thing is of interest to those of us too poor or too crude to have our very own really cool compost thermometer. :indif:

Have you procured either Joseph Jenkins' Humanure Handbook or the old, unabridged hardback, Rodale's Complete Book of Composting ?

They both go into serious temperature science, and would greatly enhance your knowledge base.
......And while we're talking books, let's not forget Perter Tompkins and Christopher Bird and Secret Life of Plants and Secrets of the Soil.

Mind blowing stuff, all.

Just bought the Rodale book. $4.00 total cost in which $3.99 is shipping! I love Amazon! http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...+to+composting

I'd be jealous of that one cent price tag.......if my Old Pop hadn't given me my copy, outright.

:grin:

Fabulous catch.........

I appreciate all the discussion on this thread.:goodjob:
Now it's my turn to ask a question! (:)long time lurker, first time poster)

Two years ago, after getting into this thread, I started hauling home five-gallon pails of raw woodchips from the township dump. Lots of green leaves mixed in. All I had was a Corolla and a trunk - but I could fit 6 pails. I was pretty proud :happy: !

Having no space on my citylot, I just dumped a pile in my backyard all summer long. It's now about the size of a picnic table.

They've been sitting since then, slowly doing their 'thing'. But - I need to clean up the pile for more space. (i've got some other locations for compost)
Should I screen out the "good" material (for the garden) and mulch the larger leftover pieces (on my raspberries)?

I've got a 1/4" hardware cloth screen rack.

I wouldn't worry about the bigger stuff, just use it all for mulch between rows....especially tater rows, seeing as there's no manure in your mix.
Then till it all in this fall, or not......

Of course if you're just itching to screen some compost for therapeutic purposes, well.......

:grin:

Good to have you posting.

Deep fryer thermometer

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Brinkmann...03-S/202300607

Holding at 130 at various places around pile. :)

My library is getting larger with educational books that I bought on Amazon for very cheap. A number of them were bought for a penny plus shipping. They always are in good shape.

Would anyone here plant in straight compost without dirt (sand/clay)? I think there is a difference between dirt and soil.

Some crops do well in pure (aged a couple years or more) compost.

Some like a little more bland base to sink roots in.

My experience is that onions, carrots, garlic, corn, melons, tomatoes, sweet taters and cole crops all do well in ridiculously high percentages of compost.
I'm sure there are many others.....

Anyone else have direct positive experience, or not, with particular crops in pure or nearly pure compost ?

I have an aversion to buying potting soil. Too much $$$ for too little benefit. I have used semi-sterile compost as a seed starting medium. Vermicompost is great for that.

One of the projects on my list is to make a big solar oven for cooking compost and soil. Florida has a big nematode problem and sterilization is the best organic solution that I know of.

Did taters in straight compost hilled with ground up leaves last year. Digging them was great. Just scooped them up with my hands.

This year I've started onions in the same place.