After a month I turn the compost pile and add more water. This was my main task yesterday.
In these compost piles there is manure, straw bedding (containing urine), matured compost and water. But there is way more straw than manure so when I turn the compost I add more water. To turn it I simply pick up bucket fulls with my trusty little John Deere and create a new pile watering as I go.
The middle of the old pile is steamy and hot. Just the way we like it.
This is one of the sit upon jobs I insist on doing myself – it takes time to make really good shareable compost.
And this is only one of the piles! There is another growing by the barn. Next I add the two together.
17 Eggs a Day
Not terribly high but look at the comb on this old bird. She is no longer laying.
The comb on the head of a good layer chicken is bright red, full, and healthy looking.
But I let the old layers live out their lives in the chook house. They have done good work over the years. A chicken can lay eggs for 3 – 4 years, sometimes longer on our GM free diet but can live up to 5 to 10 years, so, yeah, we may have a lot of chickens but not a lot of layers which is why I have twenty five newbies growing under the apple tree.
Pink Eye in Calves
The calves have had two treatments and were allowed out into the field after the sun had gone down. No signs of recovery yet.
The other cows are waiting through the wall for the calves to be returned to the herd.
Being watched closely for any sign of conjunctivitis.
Sun and White Pigs
We are fighting sun burn and winning I think. Though those ears are taking a hit. Although a cross between a large white dam and a duroc sire- these piglets ate getting freckles on their back. So sweet.
Visalia, California
A few times a year I fly out to Visalia to help my son with his kids. I am booked to be nanny for the last week of the summer vacation in August.
But look at this forecast for next week.
And it will be only just July. What the hell!?
Good morning. Today we have 78f with a chance of rain. I’ll take it!
Have a great day!
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
9 responses to “Compost for the Win”
I have been deliberating for a while on getting more chicks to replace our very old girls and still have not done it. It’s because of the cost of feeding so many chickens a healthy diet. In the past we have always harvested the chickens ourselves after a couple of years and raised more, but it is a job that neither of us enjoy. So we haven’t done it for several years and now have about 20 old laying hens who aren’t laying but once in a very long while… if we are lucky. Not sure yet what we will do, as we have always had lots of our own eggs from our farm. It’s a conundrum!
Oh, and how wonderful to have such huge compost piles!!! What I would give for those!!! 🙂
You grow lovely compost! My very smile pile that went into the wildflower beds was turned with a plain old shovel. How fun to be able to use the John Deere 😉 The Charlottes have settled quite well to their zinc routine.
I cannot begin to comprehend those temps. No one can function in that. Plan to be very mindful please because that is simply dangerous. And don’t bring them back to the farm after. Yikes!
Oh my, that was supposed to say “small pile” of compost not smile… I am going to blame auto correct on that one!
You’ve reminded me of my sister falling head first into slurry, when she was about 5 years old. It still makes me laugh!
busy, busy, and somehow it all falls into place, thought never a straight path
Those temperatures look like the heat index or how hot it would feel not the actual temps. From the two weather forecast sites I checked the projected temperatures are in the mid 80s and one day in the low 90s – typical July summer in Illinois and Indiana. I always heck at least two and sometimes more sites for the weather forecast. I know of one that is always less than reliable and pushes as much alarm and fear as possible, putting the heat index and how hot it might feel where the actual forecast temperature should go. For what it’s worth, I’ve got 50 years of my own data that don’t show much change at all in the temperatures or weather in the midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa).
Ouch is all I can say about that weather! Unbelievable. We had backyard chickens when our kid was little, a kindergarten project with an incubator that wasn’t thought all the way through. Many of us parents ended up with chickens. Our oldest post-menopausal girl (her name was Atlas and she was the last one) lived till over 12 before a predator raccoon figured out how to unlatch her house one night. There was great sadness in the house.
When I was a gardener I was an avid fan of the compost. It was a happiness of sorts to tend it.