Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

That's a lot of compost. Best I can do is work the pickup hauling one load
of alpaca manure at a time down from a friend's place in the foothills.
Lucky I don't have stripmined subsoil to work on. I have to build beds to
get crops from this rabbit brush in one season. It worked well last year,
onward and upward.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/2/2007 at 7:11 PM McBride & Putnam wrote:

>I borrowed my friend/neighbor's small tractor that has a front end loader
>on it and spent the day out in a freezing wind taking about 20 scoops of
>finished compost from our big compost pile to the garden and dumping them
>over the fence to be spread on the beds as soon as I get time.  That done,
>I proceeded to carry unnumbered scoops of compost down the field to an
>area where I hope to grow mangels next year.  Considering the state of the
>soil, I think I may need to put in a green manure crop first--perhaps an
>early planting of oats.  The area is reclaimed strip-mined land and 20
>years of spreading manure and compost and grazing sheep is just now
>getting it to the point where it actually has a bit of pasture value.  In
>between spreading compost I rebuilt our compost heap, layering incredibly
>rich soil that has built up around the area, fresh manure and partially
>broken down compost from cleaning stalls over the past few weeks,
>well-composted material, and new grass and brush clippings. Right now it
>looks as if a small volcano as erupted  just outside the barnyard, as
>there is a nice little column of steam rising from the cone.  Darkness and
>feeding time overtook me before I finished spreading all the compost so
>I'll have more to move tomorrow.  A semi- truck load had gotten built up
>because I didn't get a chance to spread it last fall.  Everything from our
>goat barn, the main barn, which houses 3 horses and 3 pigs at this moment,
>and all the rakings from the sheep yard go onto this compost pile. We bed
>the horses with wood shaving and the goats,sheep, and pigs with straw.
>Also, everything from the cleaning the chicken house is cleaned to here,
>all scraps from the garden and kitchen are fed to chickens or pigs before
>going to the compost. Brush, leaves, grass cuttings--everything organic
>goes on the compost heap.   Every week or two, I use my tractor and blade
>to turn and stir and pile the compost up into a pyramid shape to keep it
>cooking and to help keep water draining off so it doesn't get sloppy. 
>Because fresh manure is being continuously added there's seldom a problem
>with the heap being to dry but if it does get dry there's a water spigot
>close enough to hook up a hose and wet it down.
>
>It's nice to have such large quantities of compost available--but I sure
>could have used a warmer day to be moving it around.
>
>Claudia
>
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