Prepping the new bin

Here I have prepared the new bin with left over wood pellets from the curing pile. They seemed fluffy enough that I could use them again. It might be a bit of a chance.

My little helpers

You can see here that I've made piles of worm rich manure and slowly scraped away the top of the manure to expose the worms. Then added the worms to the curing pile to help break it down faster. Check out Worms at Work on npr.org

Curing stage

I've reached PFRP in my 3rd bin. Here you see me transferring the compost to my curing area along the stone wall. I needed the bin as the other one was full and ready for the blower. Notice that I just removed the front of the bin so the bucket could fit in without taking the whole bin apart.

Micro bin 3

Finally success! OK I made some really stupid mistakes. Here you will notice that I have moved the bin to a new clean area that we could dump the manure in from above. This is a really good thing. Makes it so easy. I reached temperature in less than 3 days. Notice the steam in the photo above.

Second attempt

So when this one filled up I threw a canvas over it and jumped up and down on it to pack it down so I could fit more in. Huge mistake. You got to keep it porous and loose. The solution was I moved it all to another bin. That was a nasty job. Lost a little love for manure.

What happened the first attempt?

This looks good, I know, but the problem is it didn't reach PFRP "Process to Further Reduce Pathogens". It didn't reach the proper temperatures for the right amount of time. It was either too wet or I packed it too tight.

The Beginning

One of the reasons we bought this property was it came with a horse named China. The previous owner would pile up the manure as seen in the middle of the O2Compost cubes and slowly let it decompose on its own terms. This is what most horse farm owners do unless they have enough money to have a big ugly dumpster on there property. The problem with this method is the seepage that flows out of the pile when it rains. It goes in our water ways and that's not good. Fish don't like ammonia. On the left is my second attempt using the micro bin. On the right was my first attempt. The only thing that worked right on the first attempt was I got this beautiful cube.

Love of Composting

For some reason, and I really don't know why, I love the the process of horse manure changing into compost. Maybe it's the giving back to earth or the circle of life or something else but one thing for sure is the process has always been REALLY slow! Well...that has all changed!

Thanks to Peter Moon of O2Compost composting just got faster, cleaner, and a lot less work. And, call me crazy, but it's fun. So I'm going to post what I learn to help anybody that I can on using the O2Compost system. Meet Tys our Friesian manure machine.

Why compost?