The Bovine Bugle

The merits of manure composting--better for everybody!

Back in May, Jonathan wrote about how he uses manure on his organic dairy farm. We thought it ws worth repeating here, for our new Bovine Bugle readers:

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 August 13, 2004 07:50 PM