The Bovine Bugle

The merits of manure composting

When I came in from chores this morning, Karen had two phone messages from people wanting to get some compost today. One person was a new customer from a couple towns over who would come with her pickup for a little over a yard of compost. She eventually wants 6 yards or so. The other call was from an organic vegetable grower right here in Franklin. He has been buying compost from us for the last 3 years. He wanted two dump trailer loads (7 yards) . It's only two miles into the village so I delivered it right to his garden with my tractor and dump trailer.

Now that we are composting most of our dairy manure, we sell some for another source of income for the farm. We are doing more composting of our manure because we feel the compost is better for our soils than raw
manure or even manure that has been stacked for awhile. More and more organic farmers are composting their manure for the same reason. The majority of conventional dairy farmers store their manure in pits and add enough water to make it liquid. This makes it easy to pump it into big liquid manure spreaders, and to handle high volumes of the liquid manure. Many
organic farmers feel this liquid manure is very harsh on the soil and, more importantly, on the organisms living in the soil. Compost is a very gentle product
and feeds and nurtures the organisms in the soil. Composting usually requires more time and effort than a liquid manure system but organic farmers feel its
worth it.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Posted by Blogger Chris at May 5, 2004 11:23 AM