It's Still Cooking!

[RDRANCH]

We are in a cold snap right now and the compost pile is still cooking. It's layers of horse manure and and chicken poop and pvc tubes for ventilation. Every morning when I go out to feed I pull one out to see what's going on inside. There are still warm, not as hot as last week but warm is good when the low's have been the single digits.

I am testing using burlap bags to cover the pile and it seems to helps keep in some of the heat coming out of the tubes and even now there are all sorts of critters crawling around the vents. I can't wait to use the finished product this spring.

 

[digitS']

For a few years, I had access to lots and lots of rain-spoiled alfalfa hay. Also, there was all the cow manure I cared to shovel into the back of a pickup.

Layered, these things made tall square compost piles at the corner of my garden. The material was initially stacked higher than my head.

The garden was freshly cleared land and the crawler tractor had piled up stumps with their roots and attached soil in a pile near the compost.

The 2nd winter, after it snowed, I set the stumps afire. Months passed with these pine stumps burning out at the end of a snow covered garden. Sitting beside these slowly burning piles was the steaming "chimneys" of the alfalfa and cow manure compost. Moonlit nights, I could look out the window and see the glowing embers and steam rising.

It was kind of a scene from Dante's Inferno . . . but, by the spring, I had beds of ash and compost!

Steve

 

[PunkinPeep]

What a cool story, Steve.

My hubby used to work for a 'soil vendor' for lack of a better term. But it was one who did all natural compost - healthy for the area we were in, etc. He was not making it out of anything inorganic or bad for the soil just so it would be black, etc.

But that's not my point.

My husband was eventually on call to be the guy who would answer the emergency calls when the compost piles would catch on fire. It probably happened once a month or so that one of them would get so hot it would start flaming in the night.

Nature is so cool!

 

[journey11]

That is neat, Steve.

I LOVE compost. I am compost crazy. When I first got chickens I was so excited to put all the droppings on my compost pile, I cleaned them out in the fall. THEN, I read about the deep-litter method. I could have let it compost right where it fell AND warm my chickens through the winter with the resultant thermal energy from the breakdown.

Ditto PunkinPeep--nature is so cool!

 

[Frugal Que]

PVC pipes for compost ventilation! Genius! I have some on hand that I am going to stick through my pile. I love learning new ways of doing things. That is why I love this site. Thanks for the tip.

Also I didn't know know about the deep litter composting method in the chickens' coop. That makes so much sense. Thanks for that tip too.

I am just laughing at how we make sure all the poop is taken out each day and dumped in the regular compost.

Always learning ...

 

[lesa]

Frugal Que, I have a few ideas about deep litter method, that might help you out... That poop that you are cleaning out on a daily basis, is quick to compost and removing it, keeps your coop smelling better. The wood chips take years to compost. I clean the poop everyday and use it in the garden, the chips I put in a different pile. Sometimes I use them as mulch around my blueberries. If you read up about deep litter on BYC, you will find varied opinions. The idea that the coop stays warmer seems to be true only if you have a dirt floor. I found it impossible to leave the chips in for longer than a month- it just got too smelly... Happy Holidays!