Monday 9 March 2015

8 Tons Of Black Gold!

I know I'm lucky when it comes to my family. Even luckier when my dad comes over on a Sunday morning to visit his grand daughters and brings 8 tons of muck with him! It was a welcome bonus and I know that manure is something I'm lacking when it comes to being self sufficient.
 As the ground is still quite wet we had to dump it in the next field over to the garden but it will be worth the walk with the wheel barrow, as some of this muck is lovely and well rotted. 
The strawy bits I will remove and leave for another year to rot down and the rest will go into the garden or the orchard to feed all my plants and improve the soil.
One day I'd like to be in a situation where I'm not having to import muck like this to make my garden grow, instead having animals here to produce it for me (myself included when I get round to building a composting toilet). 
I'm still trying to improve the soil at the moment from the quite heavy clay so I'm having to use more than I would normally, but it's handy having a father who is a farmer and can bring large quantities for me - even if it was a surprise! So with this and the wood chip I've got most of what I need for the gardening year, except potting compost which is something I'm going to have to work on producing myself. 
How much muck does everyone use in their homestead each year?

20 comments:

  1. at the moment loads of alpaca poo, I am turning rough pasture into a growing area, the ground has never been fed, the soil is in very poor condition so its going to be a long haul, the great thing with alpaca poo is you can use it neat and fresh :-)

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    1. The same with rabbit and I've thought about going around and collecting it! There's a lady who lives near here who sells her alpaca poo at ten quid a bag!

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  2. Your dad can adopt me! :) What a wonderful thing for him to do.

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  3. Kev - can your dad load up a truckfull of that gold for us? i think it only takes a few days by boat to get from there to here - bahahahah! thankfully, we have a neighbour whose family owns a horse rescue farm about an hour away. jam makes a trip once in spring, and once in the fall and gets a truckload of the good stuff. we amend our beds every spring and fall - plus we now have 3yr old compost to start adding to our beds this spring - we compost all of our scraps and have 4 large piles which is also gold!

    also - i read your posts about setting up your garden this year and asking how long it has taken other people to get properly set-up. the majority of commenters were correct in that it is never really done, just gets easier as you add infrastructure and amend your soil over the years. this will be our 5th year of gardening here at the manor, and like you, we finally have a greenhouse, finally have enough raised beds for this year, and plan on building another storage shed and an outdoor kitchen. this year should be our best year ever.

    after looking at your set-up, i think you are going in the right direction of needed projects and i think this will be a great year for you!

    so when can we expect your dad? of course we will put him up for a night or two and be sure he is well-fed - bahahahah! oh how i wish for that truckload of gold.

    your friend,
    kymber

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    1. He does like to travel so he'll be up next week!
      Compost is something I really need to improve on, I make some but nowhere near enough.
      The infrastructure question is one I knew would be on going, My mums had the same garden for thirty years and there isn't a year goes by without her doing another big project and I'm sure I'll be the same!

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  4. You will be surprised at how quickly all of that disappears over the summer. There are lots of small worms and for lack of knowledge, I will call them bugs that are very small, they will break the big manure down into more refined small "bug" manure and it seems to disappear. Just take a close look at the soil in a few months.

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    1. Hopefully I'll have it all moved by then. I managed to move a dozen barrow fulls yesterday onto the fruit bushes.

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  5. Being self -sufficient isn't necessarily doing everything yourself, but bartering and sharing skills and equipment is. I bet you give your dad a hand at his place and do task for your mum "in exchange"
    I understand your excitement at your dad's gift. I received a couple of tonne bags of sawdust today. Hurrah! and he went away with honey and eggs.

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    1. I was brought up bartering! I do some work at mum and dads but I certainly end up on the better side of the deal as they pay me as well!
      I've got lots of oak sawdust I'm not sure what to do with at the moment, the tanic acid means I can't really use it in the garden fresh although I could compost it somewhere.

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  6. That's really great, it will be really useful for you.

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    1. It sure will - and it'll help to produce a bountiful crop this year.

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  7. I never have a shortage of cow dung Kev. Most of it goes into the tank for slurry. But I can always scrape a couple of barrows off the slats every week. We also get dung from the pigs and the pony.

    I would cover it up with old pit silage plastic if I was you. Just to generate heat to kill off any weed seeds and stop the straw from growing out. Is it cow manure? I find this to be a cold manure and full of weed seeds like nettles and docks. We buy organic chicken fertilizer pellets too. You will have plenty of poultry manure to use.

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    1. This is horse muck, so not as good as cow but still good. I've been using the chicken muck but I need to create a big compost area to keep it all in really and have somewhere to let it rest be fore I use it.

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  8. what a fantastic surprise, just the best present! I don't use any muck at all on my tiny raised beds and pots etc but I do have four compost bins into which all the household peelings, garden waste and paper from the office shredder go, just about keeps me self sufficient in compost. When you've got four of them you can afford to let one or two stand for a year or so and really break down properly. I only bought one, the other three were inherited from people who didn't want them and one washed up in the last floods!

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    1. I meant the other two of course, or that would mean I had five!

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    2. Four compost bins sounds like a good system. Like I said above I need to get more organised with my composting. I'm currently still adding to last years bins which means I can't use what's in the them. One of my next projects is to knock a few posts in the ground and make a large composting area.

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  9. What a lovely gift ... I never thought I would hear myself say that when I was a townie!!

    We only have chicken poo at the moment, but they are producing well and I have lots to put in my polytunnel beds. Roll on the day when we have pigs again, lots of lovely poo. Something I might not be saying when I'm knee deep in the stuff !

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    1. As I've got older I've got excited about weirder and weirder things! What's pig poo like to use? If we get some this year it will be another way to feed our garden.

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    2. It's really good after a couple of months in a heap. :-)

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