No-Turn Compost Systems + Living Pathway Regrets?

Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Welcome to Growers Daily, your daily dose of ecological farming insight. It is Thursday, November 14th, 2024. And today we are going to talk living pathways, farm conferences, and get an update on that static aerated compost system I made, so let's do it. All right. First, I want to start today by giving a huge shout out to the guys at Winfield Correctional Facility in Kansas, where I did a Q&A last night. I mean, online, I did it. They have a garden with some 20 something plots where each person gets their own plot and gets to choose what they grow. And then they donate that to the local food pantry. It's a very cool program and it was fun to chat with them. I love seeing programs like that. Very cool stuff. All right. Well, I continue to get a lot of comments from the potato show that we did on Monday, which is great. I could honestly dedicate an entire week to the topic of potatoes. So maybe sometime in January, we can do a potato week because there's a lot to cover there. It's one of my favorite foods. Potatoes, potato salad is one of the greatest inventions of all time. And all of their incredibly poor health effects aside, French fries are the greatest food on earth. I mean, they're, they just are there. That's an objective fact, but again, potatoes will get their time because there is just so much to say about them from storage to planting, to prepping the soil, to dipping sauces, all of the things for now, or at least for today. We're going to talk about living pathways and my takeaways from my fourth year on this farm using living pathways is the primary means of pathway management. In most of our garden areas. I've talked a lot about living pathways on our YouTube channel, but those of you who are just following on the podcast have not heard as much about them because I have not been podcasting for several years. Anyway, the idea with the living pathways is that I basically just keep the pathways in living plants, like clover and grasses. I mow them as high as I can with a 60 volt electric mower and edge them with a 60 volt electric edger to keep them out of the beds. Visually, I love the living pathways. I love working in them for the most part. And I love what they bring in the spring in terms of flowers and ecology, just so many bugs, spiders, all the things, both above and below ground. However, they are not without their challenges. Most of which are honestly self-inflicted. What I mean is that, for instance, last spring, so the spring of 2023, we allowed the living pathways to get as tall as possible before mowing them. We really wanted all that above ground biomass for the season. However, in so doing, we also allowed chickweed to go to seed in some of the paths. Of course, the seeds did not stay confined to the paths as I had naively hoped they would. So this spring 2024, I had some beds that were hopelessly cover cropped with chickweed. Chickweed is a tasty winter weed and a good salve, but an annoying plant to remove without tillage. So that wasn't ideal. Also, I don't love my electric push mower that I manage the paths with. Don't get me wrong, it works fine as a mower, but I really want it to be able to mow at a greater height and with more power because I do like leaving the paths somewhat tall for beneficials and it gets clogged pretty easy. I've complained before about wanting to to edge and mow at the same time and some folks sent me an idea for an attachment that they found that you can get. It's like it attaches an edger to a mower that I will try at some point. Otherwise, having the to mow and edge with two different tools is simply not the most efficient thing in the world. I also noticed this year in the drought how the grasses in the living pathways stressed really quickly and went to seed seemingly faster and more aggressively than usual. I mow them into a bag and compost them, but some seeds inevitably wind up in the beds. And if you don't have a thick layer of mulch there to protect against the germination, you run the risk of weeds in your beds. Now, for whatever reason, besides the chickweed this spring, weeds from the paths have not been a huge issue in our beds yet. I'm honestly not entirely entirely sure why, if that's a combo of mulch and low disturbance or if there's a seed predator factor as well. But you could imagine how it could become a huge issue quickly with all those weed seeds just right there nearby the beds. I still like the living pathways a lot, but even if I didn't, the challenge for me is that the alternatives are not any better. Because we're on a slope, wood chips or compost just wash out. Like there's no point in putting them down. They will just wash down the hill or over top of the beds. Bare cultivated soil, same thing. The one thing that works on a slope that isn't just living pathways is straw or hay mulch, but that's hard to employ because of the weed seeds. And we can't just top every bed and path with a lightly colored bulky mulch like those, like hay or straw, because they don't make sense for every crop. Like carrots and arugula. You cannot directly seed those things into a thick straw or hay mulch. So the living pathways still make the most sense for us. And again, I still enjoy them quite a lot. But if I wasn't on a slope on poorly draining soils in a rainy region, I would probably just go with wood chips or a super cheap compost mulch. But again, they're great. It's still my favorite part of our gardens. There is something incredibly soothing about all the green when I look out there in the middle of the spring and about how soft they are to walk on and work in. Uh, where we have mulched with wood chips, like in the tunnels, the kids hate going in there because it hurts their feet. And I don't love working in there because it hurts my knees. By contrast, they love the living pathways. Like I always say, it's like farming in a park. Anyway, uh, pathways are always going to be an obnoxious waste of labor on small scale farms, and I'd be curious to know what you have found works for you on a slope. Uh, anyway, when we come back, let's talk about farm conference season. BRB. Today's episode of Growers Daily is brought to you by Johnny's Selected Seeds. When you need proven varieties you can count on and detailed guidance from seeding to harvest, consider Johnny's your trusted growing partner. Their same day shipping can help keep your planting schedules on track. When the unexpected happens, they're here to help you grow good food. Turning to Johnny's means you can plant high quality trial proven varieties with confidence and know that their expert staff is ready to help with firsthand knowledge because they've grown them themselves. Learn more at johnnyseeds.com. All right, back to the show. I mentioned this maybe like a couple of weeks ago, but a quick reminder that if you, that I will be in Indiana this weekend on Saturday, I don't at the moment know if there's any room left for this event, but I will stick that link in the show notes. That is a good segue into what I want to talk about today, which is the farm conference season, which here in the Northern hemisphere is winter, uh, and it's probably the same thing in the Southern hemisphere, except for your winter strikes in our summer. Anyway, a timely question came in, uh, about that particular thing. Conferences from Patreon member Jakers Acres who writes quote, what conferences and workshops do you recommend? End quote. Great question. I thought it would make a lot of sense to explore that now, as we head into the conference season so that you can pick and choose where you may want to go. Remember that I will try to get to questions from everywhere, but I will always get to those Patreon questions. So Patreon members don't be shy. I don't do farm consultations, but I will answer whatever you ask me about over there. Uh, patreon.com slash no-till growers is your farmer Jesse consultation station. Anyway, yes. Conferences. So instead of saying go to this or that conference, I'm going to give you a good way to think about conference season that will help you choose first, the organizations that put most of these conferences on are doing great work locally. I'm sure there are exceptions, but by and large, few people are more plugged into the local farm scene, quite like the directors of your state and or local small farm organization. So the first thing I would say is that if you can go to only one conference, choose a local one over a national one. There are great national conferences, of course, and I'll talk about that idea in a second, but even if it's a smaller conference, you will get to hear stuff that actually affects you and your context. That could be grants that are locally available. It could be forthcoming legislation that may affect you or that has just passed. That could be services that are particular to your region. That could be meeting other farmers looking for, to collaborate on growing certain items, or you may I've learned about composters and native plant nurseries that I had no idea existed because I attended a local conference. So for me, definitely attend one local conference near to you and to your region. Then if you have the time, money and mission, consider attending one of the bigger, more national conferences or just another smaller conference. But I like those national conferences. They're pretty fun. There's still a regionality about them often. Uh, but also that's where you might get to meet, you know, the bigger names in the farming world and see them talk, which can be really fun. Uh, my preference is still generally smaller conferences. I have attended a ton of conferences over the years and it's at the smaller conferences where I have the best, most enriching conversations because I'm meeting so many people that I will probably meet over and over and over again through the years. I always meet a lot of great farmers and learn from people who do not have YouTube channels or Instagrams or whatever, uh, but just farm in their region and know it and kind of know it inside and out. And that's a really special opportunity in my eyes. So lots of good things can come from a national conference, but I think just the amount of things you can get from a small local conference is just unrivaled. For me, I will be at that conference I mentioned in Indiana this weekend. Then I will be at one in DC area in early December for an event that I'm not entirely sure is open to the public, but I'll get back to you on that. Then I will be attending Oak here in Kentucky, which I have been going to for like 13 or 14 years or something. I'm not planning to present there though. I will likely moderate a session or two. Otherwise I'm taking it easy on conferences this year and focusing on this show and on my farm and on my family. But you may see me at some local conferences cause I will, I love attending them. So thanks for the question, Jakers Acres and the support you rock up next. Let's talk about that static aerated compost system I made. Some of you won't know that I made, but I'll talk about that too. Be right back. Today's episode of Growers Daily is brought to you by Farmhand. I don't know about you, but I got into farming to be in the field, growing food for my community, not creating elaborate pack lists, not writing newsletters or responding to emails, not designing and maintaining web stores and et cetera, and I especially don't enjoy doing those things after an already full and fulfilling day of growing food. Actually, if I spent less time on my phone and behind the computer, that would be great. If only there were a solution for that. Enter Farmhand. Farmhand is the only all-in-one virtual assistant built by and for farmers. With one single platform, Farmhand enables you to offload your administrative tasks, send and manage communications, and sell more to your customers. Farmhand saves growers an average of six hours of administrative load each week. That's six hours so you can get back into the field, spend more time with friends or family, or have a life outside of the farm, which is actually a thing. Think about it. What would you do with an extra six hours a week? Sign up for a free trial with the link in the show notes, because now is the best time to dial in those systems for the next growing season. Follow the Farmhand link in the show notes to learn more. All right, back to the show. Okay, so last year I made a static aerated compost system, and it's worth taking some time to talk about what that is. First, there's a whole video about it at our YouTube channel, which I will link in the show notes. It describes what I used to build it and why. But to recap, in organic certification, you have two main options for making compost from manure. To dramatically oversimplify it, you can either turn the pile or windrow five times in a 15-day period, maintaining a certain range of temperatures, which would be between 131 degrees Fahrenheit and 170 degrees Fahrenheit throughout that time period, that's 55 to 75 degrees Celsius. Or you can use an in-vessel or static aerated system, also sometimes called a forced air system, that pumps light amounts of air into the pile, usually from below, where you only have to maintain those temperatures for three days, and you don't even have to turn it. So basically that means you can either build a system that injects a little air, and thus you don't have to turn the pile, or you have to turn the pile five times in two weeks, which is a brutal amount of labor. Obviously, if you're on a small scale, the static aerated system makes a ton of sense, because turning a pile by hand is really labor intensive. So you can see the allure of a static aerated pile. Static just meaning it sits there. Aerated meaning it has oxygen flow throughout. If you are only doing vegetative, non-animal composting, none of this matters in the eyes of the regulators. Like they don't care how long or at what temperature you compost your garden scraps. Manure is their biggest concern due to the potential to spread human pathogens, as Jane and I talked about yesterday. The USDA organic certification regulations are often much more about food safety than soil health, and it's a little frustrating, not to mention redundant to the Food Safety Modernization Act, but that's just kind of how it goes. Anyway, like I mentioned, and like I did a video about, I built a small static aerated system using PVC pipe for the manifold and perforated drainage pipe on the ground to help distribute the air. So you can kind of imagine the letter M sprawled out on the ground and then piling compost material, manure and carbonaceous material, over top of it. And then using that bouncy house blower, air goes through each of the legs and upwards into the materials that you piled on top of it. Indeed, it's a bouncy house blower, literally would inflate a bouncy house. And it's set on a timer and it helps pump air into those pipes at the right intervals, which I discussed in that video. And it worked fine for its purpose of making compost that met the organic NOP standards. But in terms of making high quality compost, I found that compost just generally is going to need a turn or two in the thermophilic stage to best manage diseases and weed seeds. Then it needs a good curing, as we talked about in a previous episode of this podcast, to make the most amount of nutrients available as possible. An exception to that might be the Johnson Sue bioreactor, where you make the compost in a vessel of sorts with perforated pipes that allow for the aeration element. After the compost stops, the thermophilic stage, the hot stage, it is recommended to add worms to finish it. Talk to your local certifier if you're organic to make sure this qualifies. But my experience with certifiers so far is that they are generally pretty open to design as long as you are meeting the temperature requirements for your static aerated piles. So anyway, adding the worms after the hot stage could be an exception to having to turn a static pile for a nice balanced compost. Worms are awesome. Worms enrich soil in many different ways and they enrich compost in many different ways. Now, to be fair, I do not own a tractor with a loader and I do not have access to the manure I thought I would by now. If that were the case, what I would do is use this system to build a pile with manure, have it meet the regulations for a static aerated pile, and then remove the compost and turn slash nurture it into something great somewhere else while I work on the next building, the next pile. So basically it would meet the NOP standards and then I could move it off and create the compost I want to create. In short, don't build a static aerated system to make compost unless you are trying to meet the Organic Regulations or Food Safety Modernization Act standards, the exception to that possibly being the Johnson Sue bioreactor, which can make a nice compost. Otherwise, I don't think on a small scale that it's altogether necessary. If you are looking for designs, you can follow mine or you can find others called aerated static piles or ASP as well instead of static aerated, but I just find aerated static to be somewhat phonetically bizarre, so I refuse to call them aerated static piles. It's just unnecessarily awkward to say, or check out that Johnson Sue bioreactor. I'll leave links to those in the show notes so that you can find them. Anyway, I think I will wrap it up there. If you were ever watching this show on YouTube and think, wow, that's really helpful and want to support our work, there is a super thanks button there to click and show some love, huge shouts to all the folks who support us in whatever way that you can, and to Willie Breeding for the theme music and the team at No Till Growers. Thank you to everyone who has been listening and engaging and subscribing and following, and especially those who have signed up to be Patreon members at patreon.com slash notillgrowers, where at a certain level, or if you just bump up from one level to another, or if you just sign up in the month of November, you will get a shout out on the show. So big shout outs today to Elizabeth Wang, Anton Monreal, I have to believe it's Monreal, that's just too super fun to say, and Madeline Blair. This trio, according to the story, was in the space station, one of the space stations, orbiting the planet, and they noticed a small rock that was orbiting with them nearby, and they decided to pull the rock in, assuming it was just space rock, and they got their little mechanical arm, and they grabbed it, and they pulled it in, and they realized that it was a small planet that had been circling our planet, and it had little life forms, and they had a little society on this little planet, and when they got pulled into the space station, it really messed things up, but they managed to stabilize it. So anyway, that was a really good story. I won't spoil the ending, though, but absolute tearjerker. Yeah, good stuff. Makes you think a little bit. Anyway, thanks to everyone who supports us in whatever way that you can. We will see you tomorrow for Feedback Friday. Thanks for watching and or listening. See you then. Bye.