[USCC] treating compost as a science, art and business

[mordechai benyaminson]

Can you partner with local garden clubs, community gardens, environmental groups, or public lands / parks administrators to use the compost in special events to plant gardens and trees? There is a growing relocalization movement among peak oil / climate change activists and these folks all pretty much understand the US has got to get back to growing a lot more food locally, especially with fruit and nut trees and permaculture gardens. If you have no such groups locally I suggest you look into the nearest city. There may be some opportunity for partnerships there. Certainly most cities could use a lot more organic matter as a base for greening themselves. Or city dwellers could be invited out to the locations of any of your local growers and the compost and their labor used to expand the growers' production and then share some of it with those who worked to make it happen.
Just my two shekels.
Bat-Tzion Benjaminson
(Negev Desert, Israel)

----- Original Message -----
From: Dana Camp <dana.camp at ocalaorganics.net>
Date: Thursday, October 18, 2007 21:14
Subject: Re: [USCC] treating compost as a science, art and business
To: compost at mailman.cloudnet.com

> I have been working on creating compost on one of those large 
> scale horse
> operations.   We are not set up (permitted) to bring outside waste 
> onto the
> farm, so tipping fees are not really an option for us.  We have a 
> smallamount of local growers who love our compost, but outside of 
> that I have not
> been able to find a strong market.  We have spread a large amount 
> of compost
> onto the land, and it has been my understanding from research that 
> once the
> compost is stable, it is perfectly fine to spread on pasture land- 
> (we're
> lookng at N values of 0.7%)   I would be interested to know (based 
> on others
> comments) if that is a disputed practice.
> I would also b einterested if anyone has done/knows good sources 
> of studies
> on the flow of antibiotics in horse farm waste.   Further, a 
> viable market
> for the compost created- we've got beautiful dirt, but where does 
> it go?
> 
> Any ideas on any of that would be fun to hear!
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dana Camp
> Ocala Organics
> (352) 591-0603 ext.201
> 
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