~SUSTAINABLE LIVING FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

[**D*A**]

What you see here is a whole lot of work. I pulled a few wheel barrows full of weeds from the garden, and needed a little more "green" to get the compost pile cooking. My brood of 10 chickens can't keep up, no matter how much I feed them. Ideally, 50/50 green to brown mix is what I wanted. My buddy's wife has 5 horses and he's always good about giving me shit (figuratively and literally). I was hoping for a truck load. They are in the process of cleaning out one of the pens and I ended up with 9 truck loads. This picture was taken last Thursday afternoon. I sprayed it down with water and split it into two piles Friday night after work. I just flipped one of the piles and the heat and gray decomposition is amazing. My plan is to flip one of the piles each morning on weekdays and see how long it takes to cook. My buddy told me he's sprayed with water and flipped piles daily, and it takes about two weeks in the summer. We'll see? I know it's hot and cooking now.

The green things on the fence to the left is part of my raspberry patch. The mulched grass clippings are on the border of my strawberry patch. I put the clippings down to kill the weeds, and when the strawberry runners come in from the top, I loosen it up and "plant" them. It worked really well last year.