This latest snowstorm gives us a great chance to talk compost.

It is almost May.  I repeat: it is almost May.  We don't like to complain about the weather here (unless it hails), but it's almost May already and it has been snowy and cold for weeks.  Ridiculous.  We already planted most of our early season crops during the last warm spell several weeks ago and they're all covered in straw to keep them from freezing to death.  We can't uncover them for at least a few more days because the weatherman says its supposed to get down to 20 or something.  Nuts.  We've got herbs piled in front of the patio doors waiting to go in the ground.  Once more: it is almost May.  This is just silly.



Green grass, blue sky... looks nice and warm, doesn't it?


Let us momentarily pretend that frozen water is not slowly drifting down from the sky and the chicken water bucket doesn't freeze if you leave it outside overnight.  Let's envision ourselves standing next to a large pile of light, fluffy decomposing organic matter.  It probably smells wonderful.  I say probably because we might have just dumped the kitchen compost bucket lately, yet amongst the wide range of horrible smells available in this world it can certainly get a lot worse than that. 

Speaking of the compost bucket, we divide our refuse into several general categories: chicken food, compost, recyclable, and garbage.  Between two adults we fill a 5 gallon pail in under two weeks with everything from egg shells to banana peels to coffee grounds (with filters - do yourself a favor and don't try to dump just the coffee grounds into the bucket like I did).   We also shred junk mail and newspapers and add it to the compost bucket.  The ink breaks down and doesn't hurt anything.  We are experimenting with composing animal waste like fish guts and butchered chicken carcasses - hopefully it isn't a total disgusting disaster.  I will report back on the results.




The most important ingredient in our compost piles is chicken manure.  It is the special stuff that makes the entire system of gardens function and the chickens worth the work.  Without it we would be forced to purchase organic compost and fertilizer in order to call our produce "organic", which would be very expensive.  The chickens produce all the fertilizer we need at a profit in meat and eggs, and they also offer some value in insect control.  Not to mention that they are surpassed only by hogs when it comes to being the pastoral version of the trash compactor.

When composted, all these ingredients supply everything a chemical fertilizer does, plus organic matter and valuable plant micronutrients like calcium (deficiency of which is the cause of blossom end rot in tomatoes), magnesium, and sulfur.  Many of these nutrients become nutrition for the eater of the finished tomato, pepper, or melon.  Not only does compost make your soil healthy for your plants, it makes the food grown with it more healthy for you.

This winter's chicken bedding (straw and pine shavings) on the left, fresh compost ready for the garden on the right.

Last year's compost is ready to be spread around our veggie seedlings whenever winter finally gives up and goes back into hibernation.  And as we do every spring, we cleaned out the winter accumulation of poop in the chicken coop and started another huge pile that will become prime black, fluffy organic compost by this fall.  The chickens poop, the veggies grow, and the cycle continues.