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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] compost pile ideas

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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] compost pile ideas
  • Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 18:42:50 -0400

I compost manure, several tons, every year.  My process is simply

• It gets taken out of the stalls (we board 32 horses).
• It gets dumped.
• Its sits there for about 180 days in a big pile.
• We move it using a 300 bu pto driven manure spreader. Several hundred tons goes directly onto a grain crop and potato fields and is chisel plowed in.
• One in the spring and late fall I make piles for the opposite season.
• I place abed of dry leaves on the bottom of the spreader, pile manure and at my garden compost site I spread wood ash across the top of the pile.
• Parked I run the manure out the back, shredding it and mixing it.  I do this many time till I have a decent pile.  PTO manure spreaders far better than ground drive.
• I stir the pile once a month using a bobcat.

That's about it.  I used to take temperatures but there are tell tale signs of proper heating, especially if you do your main composting during the winter.  I have never worried about air flow or micro managing it and it always works.  I also have a leaf pile, a huge one.  On a hill side.  Dump at the top, dig out at the bottom.  Nice and dark, and fluffy, and worm rich.  I do not criticize those that make composting a science.  I do that with other things that I want to know MORE about so I certainly understand the effort I just don't do it.  :)

By the time I use it on my beds in the produce portion of our business its been composting for nearly a year sometimes more.

I also sell it locally to small backyard gardeners and donate several cubic yards to local non-profit urban farm programs sponsored by local neighborhoods and the City of Cincinnati.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106



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