I admitted in a blog post back in early August to getting excited about a couple of things — our fly predators and composting. Well, that blog was all about fly predators, and this one is about composting!
When you have as many large animals as we do — 30 horses — you end up with a lot of manure and stall bedding. We compost it in long, narrow piles called windrows, then spread it on our pastures as a wonderful soil amendment using our tractor-powered manure spreader. The reason I get so worked up about composting is because of how incredible it really is. Lots of tiny invisible microbes break down all this organic matter and over time, turn it into something that looks like rich top soil. All we need to do is pile it up, keep it moist, and turn it. Then turn it again … and again … and again.
Over the course of several months, it goes from looking like this:
To this:
Our employee Cindy took both of these photos this afternoon, when she and I were out turning the windrows with the two tractors. That small pile in the very top photo is stuff collected from the barn stalls over the summer, so there isn’t much yet … but this will become the "starter pile" that will serve as the heat engine of a new windrow this winter.
Here’s a photo I took of Cindy moving one of our three windrows, this being the center one:
This is the windrow that is the oldest and most thoroughly "cooked." Today will be the last time we turn it. Now we will leave it alone to cure for the next several weeks, and it will be the first one we spread on the pastures this fall. But before we get buried in snow, we will have all three windrows spread on the fields. And that gives me one more opportunity to blog about compost!
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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