Compost # 1 - Success!
I'd read "An Agricultural Testament" by Sir Albert Howard (
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Agricultural-Testament-Sir-Albert-Howard/dp/8185569185/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345238154&sr=1-1) without realising that it is probably the seminal work on composting, and tried to follow it's advice as far as practicable here on Tymawr Farm.
So far, we have 2 'bins', as can be seen below:
I've constructed them from old doors, which can be had from various sources for nothing, or next to nothing and are ideal in terms of dimensions & strength for the job. I roughly drill 2 holes in each corner and connect them with cable ties - cheap, strong and easy to mend if they ever break.
All the compostable waste we generate goes into these bins: Alpaca manure, chicken manure (including sawdust and hay bedding), grass cuttings from the lawn, food waste (including any bones / meat waste), all cardboard, some paper waste and leaves (predominantly from the
'Great Oak'). Every foot or so I try to add a thin layer of wood-ash, to try to neutralise the acidity caused by the carbon-dioxide created by the breakdown process of the nitrogen-rich manures. In very wet weather I cover the heap, otherwise leaving it open to get watered by the rain, and my 'yellow gold' when I go and shut up the chickens. The heap on the right of the picture is about a year old and in that time I've also turned it twice, trying to get some air into it.
I was very pleased the other night, having not looked at the 'composting' heap for a while, I decided to dig into it and found that it had composted brilliantly; it was thick with healthy looking red worms ("just like worms used to be"), nearly black, smelling pleasantly concentrated, a little damp and airless I think, which should be easily addressed by turning more regularly next time, and perhaps adding a bit more carbonaceous material. Overall verdict; Not bad for a beginner! I'm very happy with that!
I lightly sprinkled a shovel-full over perhaps half a square metre of ground 3 days ago and it's nearly all been incorporated into the grass. A job for one weekend soon is to spread the first bay of compost over the 200 sq.m of field in which I fold the chickens.
I hope we'll see a continued improvement in this area, we've already seen a fairly decent improvement brought about by having the chickens in the area, and trying to 'top' the weeds before any seed can set (and basically trying to exhaust the weeds by cutting them down every time they have a spurt of growth!).
