Catch 22 Composting

[Mimi13]

With that lead-in I can't resist sharing this. I love the dancing ladies.

I made this frame by ripping a 2x4 to get roughly 3/4" and 2-1/4" wide strips and using 1/2" hardware cloth to make frames like this. I use them to dry sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, and such from the garden by setting them up on other 2x4's to get air under them. The frame also sits on my wheelbarrow. I shovel finished compost in it and, using leather gloves, rake it back and forth with my hands. I'm not sure how @IamRainey manages to sit and sift back and forth with that grower's flat, sounds like hard work to me but I'm sure it works. Anything that goes through the frame into the wheelbarrow is compost and gets put in plastic chicken feed bags. The stuff that doesn't go through is either trashed or, if compostable, goes into the next batch.

View attachment 1875734

Now this video is pure gold, Texas tea! I am getting this pile of poo to rolling!

Thanks for all the visuals everybody. Good or bad, I’m a visual learner!

 

[Ridgerunner]

How long should I build on one before I begin another?

I use two bins instead of three so someone else needs to answer that. Or come up with your own system. Since this is a teaching thread I'll go through my two-bin system

I keep tossing things in the build one until I bag the working one. I do not turn the build bin but toss it in the space emptied by bagging. I layer mine when I start a new one, rough stuff from the garden (usually saved in a pile separately) like sweet potato vines, bean vines, or especially corn stalks; then a layer of cut grass; then a layer from the working pile. Then I do another set of these layers. I scrape the dropping board and put a layer of pure chicken poop on top of the first set of layers. I top the whole thing off with a layer of cut grass. On two acres I can get a lot of cut grass, especially since i don't mow it all often

After a week or two this pile has sunk tremendously. depending a lot on how wet it got. If it doesn't rain I water it. Then I add another layer of cut grass and scrape the droppings board again. Nightly I dump my compostable kitchen scraps on the working pile and add excess from the garden as available. That stuff really shrinks down. I quit adding to this pile and start the working pile after I've topped the working pile off maybe three times, lets say a month.

Since we like photos this is what mine look like. I tried three-sided bins but the chickens emptied them out so i put up a fourth side. The bricks ere excess when I moved here. The metal was scrap I had laying around.

• can I put horse, dog and human hair in my piles

Yes, you can. Chicken feathers work too. I put 100% natural fiber cloth like cotton, silk, or linen in mine. On the rare occasions I time the start of a new working pile with butchering I have put the chicken wastes on the bottom of the pile. Dead rabbits and rats too if available. If I put them on the bottom the layers seal in the smell and coyotes or dogs do not dig them out.

• and where would horse manure fit into this game plan? Is it better off dumped in its own pile in the pasture after mucking the stalls?

Depending on what the horses eat and the bedding you use, horse manure usually has a lot of weed and grass seeds in it. So does cow manure. Horse manure is considered a green but is not as hot as chicken manure. Depending on the bedding it may have a lot of browns with it too. I don't know how hot your horse manure is. You probably have quite a volume available too.

You can add horse, cow, sheep, or goat manure to your compost pile, basically any herbivore manure. Rabbit manure is so mild it can go straight in the garden without composting if you want to but as far as I know that is the only one that mild.

Or you can compost the horse manure separately. There are no rigid rules, everything breaks down eventually.

 

[IamRainey]

LOVE the video!

 

[ChocolateMouse]

How long should you build? Well I do a two bin system, so I'll tell you how I do mine. I let mine build up for a year. Then in spring I move the top layer and put the compost on my beds and til it in, then late in the fall that top layer that got turned and rebuilt in the spring goes on the garden beds with mulch on top (usually straw) for winter. It's usually not quite finished but it has all winter, the early spring thaws, and some mulch to break down. We also get a lot of snow around here which is full of atmospheric nitrogen. The mulch helps absorb the nitrogen from the snow and catch it for my garden beds.
(https://www.agweb.com/article/is_there_nitrogen_in_snow)
Once one bin is empty in the fall we start building compost there, then the other bin gets stacked up and ages over the winter until we apply the bottom layers in the spring. So the whole pile sits for three months with no additions, then we add the oldest stuff first.

Hair can 100% be composted. It's got a lot of trace minerals and carbon and nitrogen.
https://medium.com/@beautytmr/the-chemical-properties-of-hair-955985908d05
Technically it's got a lot of nitrogen but because it's so inert it breaks down very slowly and with great effort and releases that nitrogen very slowly. I've composted rabbit hides for example and in a hot pile I go to turn it a year later and some of the hairs are still in tact and recognizable and obvious.

Horse manure, as stated above, is a mild green and can be composted. There are weeds seeds in horse manure but often in a thermophilic pile that's not a HUGE deal for the above reasons, though Your Mileage May Vary. The biggest problem with horse manure and bedding IMO is that there's a lot of salts in it. A long composting cycle (like 1-2 years) will allow a lot of those salts to wash out or be taken up or converted into less dangerous chemicals.
Here's a thing I found on composting horse manure.
http://acrcd.org/Portals/0/Equine Fact Sheets/ManureMgtBooklet.pdf

 

[IamRainey]

ChocolateMouse, you come up with the best technical info!

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Hahaha! I just like to double check my information before I post it so I often run a quick google search to double check that what I remember is accurate if I'm not 100% sure of it. It reinforces my own knowledge, which is good.

Sometimes what I remember isn't always right. Until today I thought the highest concentrated mineral in hair was calcium - but it's not. It's sulfur. (Which is good for cucurbits! *citation)

And then since I have the references right there in front of me I might as well post em.
A lack of citation is often the bane of my existence when I'm trying to learn something. I'd hate for it to be a struggle for someone else to find where I'm getting my information from!

For anyone wondering. I got the bulk of my basic knowledge from the book "Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre", and the Humanure Handbook. The latter of which is available online for free here if you just follow the links.

 

[Sequel]

Hahaha! I just like to double check my information before I post it so I often run a quick google search to double check that what I remember is accurate if I'm not 100% sure of it. It reinforces my own knowledge, which is good.

Sometimes what I remember isn't always right. Until today I thought the highest concentrated mineral in hair was calcium - but it's not. It's sulfur. (Which is good for cucurbits! *citation)

And then since I have the references right there in front of me I might as well post em.
A lack of citation is often the bane of my existence when I'm trying to learn something. I'd hate for it to be a struggle for someone else to find where I'm getting my information from!

For anyone wondering. I got the bulk of my basic knowledge from the book "Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre", and the Humanure Handbook. The latter of which is available online for free here if you just follow the links.

Kudos to you for checking your facts before posting! I enjoyed the read about the horse manure composting.

 

[IamRainey]

Oh! So have you tried humanure? As I mentioned I had an experiment with it which I won't get to see the results of for some time -- maybe a couple months, maybe more.

I don't intend ever to do it in a major way but I'm old and my capacities and muscle control aren't what they once were. Sometimes if I'm out in the garden it's tough to make it all the way back to the house. So I set up a 5 gallon contractors' tub with a little plastic seat meant for camping. After each "deposit" I covered it with loose, vaguely moist coir.

I never detected any odor. I held it for 4-6 months before putting it in an entirely new pile. That pile is about 18 months old now. I never monitored the temperature but I"m hoping to find it "invisible" and counting on that to mean well composted.

I may use some of it in veggie beds but not in a major way as I'm just rejuvenating and mulching those beds at this point. In any case, those veggies will stay in my family and I"m not concerned about it. I'm a use-your-immune-system-or-lose-it kinda gal. In any case, I've never had anyone die from the occasional bits of dog poo that turn up in my regular piles.

I"m curious what your history and findings about it are. I'm outside working on various projects now that I can get around again so I may revive my emergency "convenience".

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Unfortunately I'm in a location where I can't experiment with it right now, but I know some people who have and who used composting toilets of various sorts long-term. Locally Kelly's Working Well Farm does some, and non locally Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage uses it. I've explored and used both systems and seen the resulting compost. The compost is rich and amazing, the systems don't smell, and it grows things well.

I think humanure systems are great and from what I've seen they're an amazing alternative to today's water usage. Given that even low flow toilets are a gallon per flush, not to mention the way waste water and human waste is treated, I think it's a much better way of managing human waste than our current system. It's very clean and effective.

At dancing rabbit they have a system where a few people go around a couple times a week and gather buckets of humanure from public buildings and private houses like trash and give them clean buckets. The buckets are layered with sawdust. Then the buckets get emptied at the compost pile, covered, and the buckets washed with toilet brushes. They get cleaned and returned later in the week. It's all very efficient and could be done on larger scales too and I wish we would.

 

[Sequel]

Oh! So have you tried humanure? As I mentioned I had an experiment with it which I won't get to see the results of for some time -- maybe a couple months, maybe more.

I don't intend ever to do it in a major way but I'm old and my capacities and muscle control aren't what they once were. Sometimes if I'm out in the garden it's tough to make it all the way back to the house. So I set up a 5 gallon contractors' tub with a little plastic seat meant for camping. After each "deposit" I covered it with loose, vaguely moist coir.

I never detected any odor. I held it for 4-6 months before putting it in an entirely new pile. That pile is about 18 months old now. I never monitored the temperature but I"m hoping to find it "invisible" and counting on that to mean well composted.

I may use some of it in veggie beds but not in a major way as I'm just rejuvenating and mulching those beds at this point. In any case, those veggies will stay in my family and I"m not concerned about it. I'm a use-your-immune-system-or-lose-it kinda gal. In any case, I've never had anyone die from the occasional bits of dog poo that turn up in my regular piles.

I"m curious what your history and findings about it are. I'm outside working on various projects now that I can get around again so I may revive my emergency "convenience".

You reminded me of something my uncle told me. His parents emigrated from Croatia in 1932 or thereabouts, they had a nice farmhouse here with 2 bathrooms, but his dad always grabbed the shovel and headed out to the raspberry patch when he had to go. The house I live in now originally had an outhouse, as did most rural homes. There are times when the power goes out I wish we still had one, lol.