Building great soil is the foundation of a successful organic farm and with composting as the best way to increase the availability of nutrients to plants we have been actively involved in designing methods to achieve this on a larger scale.
We are always collecting materials as inputs for composting from manures across the farm including from the cows, chickens, ducks, guides fowl and sheep swell as dry leaves, green weeds, grass clippings, mulch hay, food scraps and coffee grounds. From off the farm we collect seaweed, horse manure, newspaper, human hair and sawdust. Through support arrangements with our sponsors, we receive native mulch, mushroom compost, organic biomass, pine chip sawdust and fines as well as screened chicken manure. To all of this we add blood and bone, mineral rock and dolomite lime. The whole mixture is combined using the tractor bucket and then property wet down with clean water to start the decomposition process.
In 2015 we decided that a dedicated location on the farm was needed to be able to collect, store and mix compost for the gardens so we set up a series of 8 bays wide enough to fit the tractor bucket to increase our organisation of the composting process.
To ensure appropriate strength of the bays, the rear wall is reinforced with large blocks of wood and the walls of the bays are built using recycled corrugated metal and old star pickets. While the design will serve its purpose for the time being, the ultimate vision for the composting bays will be to significantly increase the size of the bays and construct them out of reinforced cement walls.