![]() Study the books to understand the sciences. (50 minutes, 39 seconds.) Listen to Neal Kinsey’s helpful lecture on how to test compost and manure, to ensure those inputs are balancing your crops and soil. Neal Kinsey, Compost & Manure Analysis, from the 2005 Eco-Ag Conference & Trade Show. High-percentage manure composting requires a little more art. You will never get in trouble composting or using a high carbon ratio compost. You will learn Nature uses very little manure to help compost all the carbon materials she deposits there each year. Take a close look at the prairie or the forest floor. Is there a feedlot? Are there horse stables? Is there a food processing plant in your area? You can make compost with all manure or almost no manure. Find out what resources there are nearby. You can minimize those costs by using all the organic materials available in your immediate area. If you are thinking of setting up a large composting operation, you need to determine the best ways of making sure your product is good and your operation in set up in a profitable way. Composting is the art of working with the decay process in an economical way. When it dies, it is going to rot whether you want it to or not. Keep it SimpleĮvery living thing will sooner or later die. Then I had to buy more trucks and tractors. Soon word got out that I had a weed-free soil, sand, and manure mix. ![]() (1 hour, 58 minutes) Listen in as Blosser, the founder of Midwest Bio Systems, explains how to make compost, and how it can be used on a commercial scale. I complimented her on the good job she did weeding, and she replied, “Malcolm, you soil/compost mix never has any weeds in it.” Edwin Blosser: Composting Made Simple, from the 2017 Eco-Ag Conference & Trade Show. She grew shrubs in big containers and I noticed her containers were free of weeds, while other nurseries always had a weed problem. One day, I made a delivery to a woman who operated a small nursery. I explained to customers “this stuff may be hot,” but they bought it anyway. Then I had to use manure that was still raw to make the mixes. It wasn’t long before I used up all the rotted manure. I was forced into the soil mixing business. Soon word got out that I had manure mixed with sand and/or soil, and here came the landscapers. ![]() Next, the landscaper’s mother wanted some compost mixed with sand, then his uncle wanted compost mixed with sand and topsoil. I got to looking at that money and thought, Gosh, that was much easier than spreading that manure in the field and plowing, disking, planting, cultivating, irrigating, harvesting, then going to the market and letting someone else dictate the price. Then it struck me, Why don’t I sell compost?īut I soon learned that at that time, few people, including farmers, knew was compost was. We always kept a few big piles around.Ī visiting friend who was a landscaper spied our manure piles and pestered me until I finally sold him some. Our fertilizer was lots of manure gathered from our and the neighbor’s cow pens. Besides the usual farm crops and animals, we raised vegetables, up to 20 acres some years, and did it all organically. Our farm was more of a hobby than a necessity, although it was a good place to live and raise our family. I made my living working on the railroad. When I got into the compost business, it was by accident.
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