Black gold

“Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as leaves and food scraps, into a valuable fertilizer that can enrich soil and plants. Anything that grows decomposes eventually; composting simply speeds up the process by providing an ideal environment for bacteria, fungi, and other decomposing organisms (such as worms, sowbugs, and nematodes) to do their work. The resulting decomposed matter, which often ends up looking like fertile garden soil, is called compost. Fondly referred to by farmers as “black gold,” compost is rich in nutrients and can be used for gardening, horticulture, and agriculture.” Composting 101 (nrdc.org)

Although I don’t remember exactly when I started, I have been composting our kitchen food waste for something close to 40 years. In St. Louis, where I started, busy with my medical training and the early years of my medical practice, I composted by benign neglect. We simply collected our nonmeat/nondairy food waste, dumped it into the compost pile at the back of our yard, and let nature do the rest. I didn’t touch the pile and for years, the only clue I had that decomposition was happening at the bottom of the pile was that, despite regularly adding to it, after the first few years it didn’t get any bigger. But, even without help from me, nature knows what to do, and much later, when I finally decided to try to start a small garden, I found a beautiful layer of rich, dark “soil” at the very bottom of the pile. I also found that those lovely “biodegradable” bags that I had been using to line my kitchen compost pail (so I didn’t have to scrub it out all the time) needed much more than benign neglect to breakdown. They all looked pretty much just like they did when we put them in, except much dirtier! YUCK!! I don’t use them anymore.

With our move to Springfield, I found myself seriously contemplating starting a vegetable garden, so I decided to abandon benign neglect, in the hopes of not having to wait years to generate useable compost. I purchased an actual compost bin and committed to turning the compost. Turning helps accelerate the rate at which the organic matter decomposes. The faster decomposition not only generates useable compost faster, it also allows the decomposing matter to heat up enough to kill the weed seeds, a definitive added bonus. So, periodically I would disassemble the bin, move it to a nearby location, and fork and shovel the compost that had been inside back into the relocated bin, redistributing the layers and adding air in the process. Although I didn’t turn it as much as I probably should have, even my modest efforts yielded rewards. Within a few years, I had a nice supply of rich dark organic matter which I used to help start a vegetable garden. Adding backyard chickens and contributing their waste to the pile allowed me to generate a generous amount of compost to enrich the garden each spring.  

After the Springfield experience, composting at the farm didn’t seem like that much of a change. Other than moving to my parent’s composting bins (and a lot more chickens and hence more chicken waste for the compost), my Springfield practices were allowing me to manage… until the goats arrived! Goats are inherently wasteful animals. They eat only the choicest parts of the hay, leaving the remainder on the ground to mix with their pee and poop. The upside of that is that I don’t have to buy much straw for bedding in the goat house. The downside is that they generate lots and lots of soggy, poopy, hay that needs to get added to the compost pile every few weeks.  After the first time I mucked out the goat house, my two compost bins were full to overflowing. Out of necessity, I started a goat waste compost pile. It kept growing.  Although experience had taught me that turning it could accelerate the decomposition process, turning it became hours of heavy work. As a result, I wasn’t doing it often enough, and even if I had, the goats were outpacing what decomposition had to offer.

Finally, last year, as the goat waste pile grew to well beyond manageable, I decided I needed to make a change. After steadfastly declining to learn to drive the Kabota tractor that we purchased our first year on the farm (tractor driving was Gary’s job), I had recently broken down and learned how to operate it. Now that I was driving it, why not learn to use it to help with the goat waste? And of course, you can find videos on the internet to tell you how to do ANYTHING, including how to turn compost with a tractor. So, I learned, sort of.  I cannot claim to have much finesse managing the front-end loader, and I generally make a pretty big mess along the way, but I get the goat house mucked out and onto a compost pile, and the compost turned regularly in a fraction of the time it used to take me. Now there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the water vapor rise from my compost piles on a cool morning, telling me that I have succeeded in making it nice and hot inside, or seeing the hay and poop transforming into “black gold”.