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Yes, it really is unofficially "community composting". There's just so much great material out there, and most people see no value in it. If I can collect it and use it, I get happy chickens and great compost.

The Scouts did a cleanup at our sponsor fire station today....put down mulch, generally tidied up, and cleaned up some leaves and weeds. That meant about 10 more bags of mixed leaves and weeds for the chicken run. When I got home, I found my wife had mowed the lawn and left me three barrels of...

Memorial Day is coming up, which means tonight was the Cub Scout pack's annual cemetery cleanup, and a nice influx of carbon for my chicken run compost system. I'm going back to pick up the 2nd load tomorrow, after I dump this load in the run in the AM.

Yes, chickens want to chicken. You just gotta let them. I find in my run if I ever want to up the fun a bit, all I need to do is walk out with a pitchfork and turn two or three fork-fulls over and there's a hen party at the worm and bug buffet. From my understanding of TV ratings, "watching...

Yes, with the weather starting to warm and not a lot of carbon inputs since the fall leaves, the timing of leaves was well-timed. I recently let 16 new 2-month old hens out into the compost run, was nice to start seeing them very quickly figure out the way things work, scratching and...

Wow, yes, we had something of a non-winter in southern new england this year. Even in a bad year, we get snow that'd shut down 85% of the US - the exception being that stretch at the top of the country from upstate NY through WI...I never complain about snow and cold to someone who lives there. :D

Just when it starts to feel like winter will never end, we had a nice warm weekend and things are already starting to green up, like the hops and mint I have around my run to the tiny peach trees I planted in the run last year. And the fact that several neighbors do their fall cleanup in the...

It was a good time and I enjoyed helping them out and talking to people about composting. Yes, compost may be a bit of work, but I don't have to go to the gym when I'm doing a lot of turning, hauling, sifting, and applying of compost!

Was set up at Revive the Roots Seed Exchange event today in Smithfield, RI doing a little compost demo with some of my chicken run compost. Had a table set up with inputs, different stages of compost decomposition, and my wheelbarrow and sifter. A few people got their hands dirty, a lot asked...

It was a really cool event. I'm already looking forward to next year and plan to work with some folks I met there in the coming year to move some initiatives forward. Yes, for whatever reason, people who run transfer stations / landfills tend to be grumpy. I guess if I had to deal with the...

If you're going to build the run with wood, I think you're on the right track with cinder blocks to avoid ground contact with the wood. My run is just a fenced-in area, so I use metal T-posts and welded wire fence.

Two other composting stories: Yesterday I attended the Rhode Island Compost Conference at Rhode Island College. It was good fun and lots of food for thought related to building on the successes of expanding composting more widely. As a compost geek, I was with my people. :gig Today I as able...

I've actually tried a little of both previously...really, the goal is slightly different. With applying seeds into the compost, the idea is that the chickens will eat some of the seed and some sprouts. This would all happen in theory within a few days or a couple weeks of applying the seed...

We've had a bit of a non-winter here in Rhode Island. We literally got our first shovel-worthy snow just the other day. I dug a small area out of the chicken run and used it to fill a flower bed in front of the house I'd dug out last fall. Was a lot of work, but whatever flowers or shrubs my...

Same.

That's interesting about the extra nutrients getting pulled up from down deep back to the surface. Comfry, with it's long tap root, does the same. Get the nutrients where the plants can use it. I grabbed about 15 bags from a neighbor. Will probably try to grab at least that many again. I'm...

Here in the northeast, it's that beautiful time of year when free carbon not only grows on trees, but falls to where we can gather it. The chickens have loved the hundreds of barrels of leaves I've dumped in their run over the last couple of months. I feel like I'm building up a good stash of...

Yes, already started...and the top 3 inches or so are nice "new" dirt, but below that it goes quickly to our native clay, thin native soil with very few earthworms. It'll be a lot of work to move all the material, but I think in the long run it'll pay dividends. Plus, who am I kidding...I can...

So, we have a flower garden in front of the house my wife wants to redo. I've top dressed it with compost and mulch, but never really tilled it. So, we're slowly starting on an new angle in chicken run composting...I'm digging up the flower bed, plants, old mulch, old compost, nasty clay soil...

Yeah, I’ll take something made in the backyard out of a waste stream over something made out of petroleum and shipped long distances every time.