Composting

  Latest on our journey to sustainability, we have begun to experiment with new ways of fertilizing our fields. One of the main ways we fertilize our crops here at Organics is by applying compost tea which is literally tea made from compost. The compost consists of a variety of wastes from around the farm, from food scraps to animal manure; it's all there and it's all made here. A little pile of compost is placed into a barrel and the rest is filled with water. A small pump churns the compost up from the bottom and slowly dissolves the nutrients into the water. The tea takes about two days to make and does an excellent job maintaining the health of the soil.

 Of course we also have the standard compost pile into which we empty manure from our pigs. cows and chickens as well as any waste material from the plants. If you are a backyard gardener or even have a small farm and plan on using compost it is important that you know how to decompose the waste properly. When you 'compost' what you are really doing is building up the bacteria content of the soil, causing organic matter to break down quickly and into a form that can be used by plants and micro organisms. This breaking down generates heat and depending on how hot and how well you manage the pile you will be able to compost different things. 

  For example if you are attempting to compost raspberry canes you need very high temperatures in the center of the pile in order to break them down. You can achieve this by adding certain wastes which decompose at very high temperatures things such as chicken manure. Now we get into maintenance, certain wastes such as chicken manure require a constant 'flipping' of the pile to ensure there is oxygen for the bacteria to break them down. So believe it or not waste is actually a pretty complicated thing and essential to the production of food. So next time you pick up an small farm apple remember that a part of that is thanks to compost. and maybe that core will someday go into growing the next generation of apples as well.