The humanure thread

[ohiogoatgirl]

lovin this topic!
been thinkin on humanure for a long while...
someone posted about puke, yes it can be composted with everythin else. it's stomach contents that came up instead of going down... so it's safe from what i've read.
i got the humanure handbook from the library once. that was the only book on the subject! out of the whole library system only one!
i think i'll find a 5 gallon bucket and save up to try that direct urine use... of course it will freeze before i can dump it on anything...

good luck all!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

oh, and the toilet paper thing, i lived in a house for a long time that there was no running water at all. there was a big chest freezer out the back door that collected rain water. that was used for flushing and watering the dogs. drinking water was got from a friend down the road who had a pump outside. anyway, the toilet paper was tossed in the trash can and burned, and the motto was:
if it's yellow
let it mellow
if it's brown
flush it down
and of course if someone stunk then it got flushed a little extra.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

oh! and in china/japan (somewhere over there) people in town went in buckets and at night you put the buckets out at the street and in the night people went around with wagons dumping the buckets in the wagon and dumped it in the fields as fertilizer.

 

[animalfarm]

Yeah, night soil, icky icky icky... Not a good thing and not at all the same thing as composted. Spreads disease and really doesn't do as much for the soil as composted manure. Runoff from raw manured fields is nasty.

This is one of those issues where you will always have people on either side of the line No worries, its what makes us human

Oh, but animalfarm, the folks at the humanure hacienda (Jenkins family) compost meat all the time. If they have a dead critter, they throw it into their one compost pile. They rotate through 2 piles, 1 per year for a family of 4. Their thoughts are that if it died from a disease, instead of leaving it for another critter to eat & get sick, compost it and kill the disease. They keep a wire cover over their compost to keep critters out.

Think about the forest floor. Birds & small mammals die, they fall the leaves and get covered by more leaves, branches & such. Bugs come in, eat what they want and the rest...rots. Nature doesn't even heat up her compost, she just ages it Isn't the best soil you have ever seen under old trees, where stuff has been piling up for years & years? There were dead critters in there at one time.

I don't know of any one who spreads raw manure on fields. It would burn them and it is illegal. When a farmer talks of spreading manure, it is composted just as humanure is. We also have to follow rules as to when the manure compost can or cannot be spread to avoid runoff. Think of the fields as a big garden. It simply doesn't make sense to waste all the nutrients and hard work and fuel to get them on the field by letting them run down the drain. At least to me it doesn't, but there are always bad apples in the barrel I suppose.

Not saying you can't but generally one shouldn't put meat or cheese in the compost; the stench from anaerobic composting can be great. It depends upon whether we are talking mice, chickens or dinosaurs. If one has a decent sized compost pile, a sufficient amount of time to handle it and no neighbours to complain well.....best to study up on composting do's and don'ts before deciding that one.

Meat breaks down differently then plant material and the process usually starts with a scavenger of the animal species in conjunction with the bugs and microbes. If not, hikers and campers wouldn't be enjoying nature quite as much as they do.

First, welcome!

When you say fields, are you talking vegetable fields already planted? Farmers around here go straight from the barn to the field. The only time it piles up is when they can't get to the field because of the weather. Maybe we're talking about two different things?

Thank you for the welcome.

It is quite possible that we are talking about 2 different things but right now its about as clear as "mud" for me. I was thinking of hay fields and CSA gardens and raw manure is a big no no for so many reasons. I would have to see the barn in question or talk directly with the specific farmer involved in the specific operation of "straight from the barn to the field" before tarring someone with the toilet brush. So many things are not what they appear to be from a distance. That barn may have a manure pit composting down under. A big operation will have regulation facilities which are not visible to the casual observer.

If it is a bare dirt bed and nothing is to be immediately planted, then yes raw manure is fine but not on frozen hillsides or on completely saturated ground before a heavy rain or near an important watershed. I personally would not use RAW manure in a veggie garden that is already under way due to a probability of contamination and the the fact that raw sewage is simply too strong for the average plant. Now, a nicely brewed microbial manure tea prudently used is another cup of tea indeed.

 

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[FarmerJamie]

It is quite possible that we are talking about 2 different things but right now its about as clear as "mud" for me. I was thinking of hay fields and CSA gardens and raw manure is a big no no for so many reasons. I would have to see the barn in question or talk directly with the specific farmer involved in the specific operation of "straight from the barn to the field" before tarring someone with the toilet brush. So many things are not what they appear to be from a distance. That barn may have a manure pit composting down under. A big operation will have regulation facilities which are not visible to the casual observer.

Um, I grew up helping on my grandparents dairy farm where I hated winter weekends where we pitched and hauled manure to spread out on the fields.

Back in the hometown, that's how its done here in Ohio, but then again we weren't "big" operations. Steaming manure in the spreader behind you on a 10F day. Oh the sweet memories.

On a side note, check out this story on well-meaning regs:
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/feb/01/sowell/

 

[animalfarm]

Spilled milk emergency cleanup plan. javascript:insert_text(':/',%20'');mmmm

Plan A:

Call the animal shelter and tell them an emergency clean up crew is needed ASAP. Send all available dogs and cats!!! No training necessary; the clean up crew already knows what to do.

 

[Frugal Que]

I absolutely love this topic also.

We do the humanure method by using five gallon buckets. We do have one "normal" bathroom for guests to use.

We use sawdust to cover everything. During the winter, we dump the buckets directly on our raised beds. The raised beds are 3' high. We cover whatever we dump from the buckets with leaves or spoiled, wet hay.

It composts beautifully.

We do have a compost pile that we use during the spring & summer when the veggies are growing. The compost in there just sits until the fall and then we use it for the raised beds too.

We dump EVERYTHING that will decompose into our pile, including meat and dead animals. We cover it really well and have had no problems. As for the bones that someone mentioned, we have never found any. It is the wierdest thing.

 

[txhomegrown]

HEY Look at me. I'm a walking, talking, fertilizer making machine.

 

[saraltx]

Thanks for sharing, frugal one. I haven't even thought about composting dead animals as well. In your experience, does it not take longer than the humanure, though?