Aerated Compost: Pallet Floor for Air Pipes

I'm excited to introduce something new to my blog: a guest post! Recently Ty and Sally Carlson posted an excellent, detailed comment on one of my previous aerated compost posts, sharing their experiences with the O2 system. They have built a pallet "floor" cleverly designed to improve aeration, and have generously allowed me to publish their comments on it here so that others can benefit. Most of this post was written by them, with my comments in italics.

Here is their comment on my previous post: 

Thank you for this post. We recently bought a small horse farm and my wife heard about O2Compost from Liberty Bell stables. I grew up on a dairy farm - it's critical to have a manure plan. I liked the idea of composting, read up on the material and my wife & I agreed. We decided to build 2 bins (we have 3 horses, planning on a 4th). A local handyman built two 4d x 6w x 4h bins and built simple low-cost flap-door-type lids with 1x4s & tarps.

I was an observer up to this part of the process as I was busy with my day job and moving from one house to the farm. We encountered a couple of start-up issues. My wife mis-remembered the settings for the blower (on for 30s every 30m). She initially set it for 30s every 30s and we succeeded in melting the impeller of the blower (replacement impeller is $12.84), plus you must scrape the melted remnants off the inside of the blower. Second is that you don't start the aeration until the bin is full. It wasn't a showstopper, but I sat down and actually read through the short manual cover-cover (which is pretty good and detailed).

We had the same observations as above - we can fill a bin in about 3 weeks, depending if we pick the manure in the pasture. We use fine pine bedding, we're not tossing in a lot of bedding material unnecessarily. The pile does compress once the bin is about half-way full, we can get close to month depending on when we pick the pasture. The challenge with two bins is that we need to start the aeration of the bin and the 30 day clock while we start filling the second bin.

We had tossed yard clippings into the bin as well, and with than and a pasture pick, we almost immediately got to half-full on bin 2 in a week (ack)! We weren't going to make that month - and bin 1 would not have completed active composting stage.

I built a third bin. Our handyman started, but I wanted the bins to be identical, and this third one was a bit shorter than the others. I dug down deeper to allow the bins to be the same size/height and completed the third bin just in time as the second one filled up. Our mistake early on was adding the grass clippings and other material before understanding the volume produced by the 3 horses.
A month later, the temps in bin 1 were down to 80F-100F, we had mushrooms growing on top and now bin 3 was nearly full. One useful note is that I took the "topping" layer off the finished bin (bin 1) and put it on the now-full bin 3. We unloaded bin 1. As noted in the original post, it's "cooked" but still in very recognizable forms. It has a musty, woodsy (but not unpleasant) smell. As it was mostly horse manure with some hay and bedding (fine pine sawdust) - it was relatively easy to unload.

The aeration pipes were a bit of a pain to work around. I'm trying something in bin 1 now that's based on the other (more commercial) systems. I've built what are basically 4" mini-pallets for the base of the bins (with the main supports perpendicular to the pipes to allow air flow under the load in the bin). The ground there is a bit muddy, so I think I will have a good seal around the edges of the bin (air won't escape under it), but I'm seeing if I get better/faster composting with more of the bin material exposed to airflow. It also addresses the note above as I have it built such that I use two 1x4 boards, one each covering the two PVC pipes in the bin - so I have a nice, level surface to remove the material. I lose a bit of bin capacity, but I'm seeing if that make the overall process a bit faster - both composting as well as removal. Finally, I'm incorporating a better lid-system - like the one above. In order to provide a buffer for the fourth horse, and more time in the bins in the 'curing' phase, I'm just completing a fourth bin. I have three blowers and am using the Valterra 4" gate valves to control routing of the airflow. As we clear the bins with existing compost, I will upgrade them w/ the 'pallet' floor and the improved lid-system.

Ty and Sally generously followed that up with an email that included photos of the ingenious pallet floor they have built for their bins. I'm quite jealous because working around my aeration pipes is the worst part of emptying the bins. The email and photos are copied below:

Greetings Libby,

I was actually going to recycle old pallets, but when I went looking, there were none to be found.  Now that I have purchased the wood, the co-op now has at least 20 free pallets stacked up <sigh>.

Oh well, these are treated boards, perhaps they will last longer.

The pallets themselves are just 2x4s and 1x4s, the overall interior dimension of the micro-bin is 43” x 72”. This is looking at the underside of the pallets, but you can see where the perforated pipes slot in, and the top section has an extra crossbeam which is where the perforated pipe stops – it adds a bit more support for the loose 1x4 that covers it.

This is a close-up of the left pallet section and the center pallet section before I installed them in the bin. I’ve added essentially lightening holes to make sure that air flows freely under the pallets and is not blocked by the extra crossbeams.  I put 3 x 1.5” holes in each of the pallet sections.

Here’s a close-up of the right pallet section.

Here are the pallets and the micro-bin.  The perforated pipes are 24” long. The pipes terminate 10” from the back of bin, that where the extra crossbeam is set (just shy of 10”). I use the Valterra 4” gate valves ($48.69 each (new) on Ebay). I want around the inside of the bin and placed muddy dirt along the bottom where it meets the ground to help create an air seal, so air doesn’t just pour out of a gap between the bin and the ground. I’ll do the same with the exterior to make sure there is a seal. Creating this lower plenum area does run the risk of the air just pouring out a gap in the structure.

Below is shown with the left and right pallets set in place. I cut the measurements by ¼” for the width of each section so there is room to place and remove them. The first section I did on the first bin I did I had a very snug fit – fine carpentry, but highly impractical. These are plenty snug, but are easy to remove.  You can see where the extra crossbeam sits – just at the end of the perforated pipes – provides support for the floating 1x4s which cover the pipes.

Now all pallets in…  You can see the crossbeams nearly/gently touching.  The pipes are held nicely in place as well, perforations are facing downward in the 5- and 7-O’Clock positions.

And with the floating boards in place. The boards fit nicely, have fairly consistent spacing, and all of the screwheads etc. are slightly recessed so shovels or loaders won’t get hung up on raised screwheads.  The front of the bin are 8 2x6s and one 2x9 at the top (in the front) to create a pitched roof for the water to run off the back.  I’m building the roof sections probably tomorrow – I like what you did with the supports and the line to open the doors. I’m planning on doing something similar.

I'm super impressed with this concept, and how lovely the Carlson's bins are. They have just started filling their first pallet-floor bin, and I am curious to hear in a few months how the floor affects the quality of the compost. Ty and Sally, please keep us updated!

You can read more about my experiences with the aerated compost system here:

Bin Construction
The Composting Process
Spreading
Is It Right For You?
3-Years of Composting (coming soon!)

Jump Pole Storage

I finally bought jump standards and poles last summer, and since then the poles have been sitting in a stack in the corner of the arena. It was unsightly and annoying, and prevented me from riding deeply into that one corner. It's also not great for the poles to sit on the damp ground.

Unsightly pile of jump poles (actually 8' landscape timbers because they're inexpensive, have rounded edges, and are the perfect length for a narrow arena).

Recently I decided to get off my butt and do something with them. This was another thing I'd been putting off because I wasn't sure of the best way to do it (which reminds me of the adage that the best is the enemy of the good). I've seen other people use ladder hooks, hose hangers, and other random things that aren't sturdy enough and eventually bend or break. You can see in the picture below that the lower-left ladder hook that I've used for only four trot poles (two on each pair of hooks) has bent, which made me not want to go that route again.

I considered making wooden brackets but instead I decided to buy the Bora Portamate Wood Organizer. I am quite impressed with how sturdy it is, especially for only $39, and it was also very easy to install. I mounted it on a section of the fence next to the arena by adding two spare fence boards horizontally (because the existing boards are too old and weathered to be trusted with much weight) and two 2x4s vertically.

Here you can see the horizontal and vertical supports. The fence is on a slope so I made sure to use a level!

The organizer is advertised to hold 600 lb so it should easily support my 15 jump poles, or even more if I need them.

The old ladder racks should do for hanging this gate.

Turns Out Two Donkeys are More Than Twice the Work

If there is a theme to this blog, it is the law of unintended consequences. By which I mean, every "improvement" I've made has presented new problems to solve. Acquiring a second donkey, which I wrote about in this post, has proven to be no exception. I've already encountered a few issues:

1) Donkey messes

One great thing about Dominick, my original donkey, is that he's quite tidy. He likes to poop mostly in one pile (a side-effect of his late gelding, I believe) and doesn't step in it on purpose. It's funny how when you start keeping your horses at home their stall habits and cleanliness suddenly go from something you never really thought about to a top priority and source of frustration.

On the other hand, my new donkey Lancelot's favorite pooping spot is "while walking." To make matters worse, the donkeys have several adorable-but-messy play sessions each day, during which they trample their manure, grind it into tiny pieces, and scatter it in all directions.

After a few weeks of cleaning shards of donkey poo out of all my expensive stonedust twice a day, I decided to move the donkeys into their own area that I wouldn't have to pick daily. Sorry donkeys, you've lost privileges!

I thought about fencing a whole new area for the donkeys, either beside the barn or in an open area near the pasture. Those spots would keep them near the horses to provide companionship and would have easy access to water and electricity. However, neither of those spots seemed large enough or flat enough, plus I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to spending money on new wood fencing yet.

To test the donkey paddock plan, I decided on the easiest and lowest-cost option: to use Horseguard electric fence to create a corridor in the pasture between the dry lot and the old run-in shed, an area of about 225'x25'. The donkeys now have shelter as well as plenty of room to run and play. It didn't require any permanent changes and I had already most of the materials I needed for the fence, which they respect very well. The one catch is that they don't have access to the Nelson waterer, and there's no nearby spigot or electricity, so when winter comes I'll have to figure out how to deal with providing water.

Twice a day I hang a fresh hay net on the wood fence. Underneath and in front of the hay net I placed some spare rubber mats to mitigate mud. Now the rubber mats and the shed are the only places I need to pick manure, and I don't feel like I have to clean every shard like I did with the stonedust. Every week or so I drag the rest of the paddock to break up the manure. They tend to poo along the path that they've already worn between the shed and the hay, so the grass along the exterior fence remains uncontaminated and good for nibbling.

It's a small enough area that Dominick no longer has to wear a grazing muzzle, which is good because Lance likes to use it as a handle. Which actually brings me to issue #2...

2) Donkey roughhousing

All of a sudden, after almost three months of peaceful coexistence, Dom started biting Lance's neck and throat hard enough to draw blood. Lance returned the favor, not quite as badly, on Dom's crest. I don't know why they were suddenly at each other's throats (literally) but the vet who runs the donkey rescue said it could be spring-hormone-related even though they're both geldings. I was able to observe them a few times and it mostly looked like mutual play. Although Lance didn't look super enthusiastic when Dom latched onto the side of his neck, as soon as they split up he'd come back for more.

The battle of the majestic mighty stallions.

I couldn't muzzle Dom because Lance would just use the halter/muzzle to drag Dom around, and I couldn't muzzle both of them because Lance is still scared of everything and would probably have a donkey heart attack.

The first time I turned Lance out back in January I left his halter on to make him easier to catch. Within an hour I had to go outside and save him from Dom, who was dragging him around by it. Donkeys are so naughty!

I've put toys out for them that they largely ignore, including a Jolly Ball, a damaged plastic gutter downspout extension, traffic cones, and our Christmas tree. Thankfully the worst of the wounding has died down now even though I still see them playing, so hopefully they've worked through whatever was going on there.

They look soooooooo innocent...

My Winter of Living Lazily a.k.a. An Experiment with 24/7 Turnout in Winter

So if you've read a few of my blog posts you may have noticed that over the last six years of farm management, my horsekeeping practices have evolved. When I first built the place I modeled my care on my favorite boarding barns, where my horses had been stalled during the day in the summer and overnight in the winter. My stalls were simple 12x12 stalls with Dutch doors to the outside. This was how my horses had always lived and they'd been fine with it and so had I, so that's what I did. I also thought that two large horses would demolish my three acres of pasture if I left them out 24/7.

Within the first year I added a small 30'x45' corral behind the barn so I could leave the Dutch doors open and give the horses in/out access to individual runs. This was better for the horses because they weren't trapped in little boxes 8-16 hours a day, and it was better for me because the horses sometimes pooped in the runs and weren't milling around in their stalls making them messier and harder to clean. Sometimes in the winter between dinner and night check I would lock them out of their stalls if the weather was good, to minimize stall cleaning even more.

Mr. F and Dominick the Donkey enjoy their newfound in/out freedom.

Two years later I took another big step and built my wonderful dry lot, so that I could transition the horses away from stalling. I still thought they would overgraze and destroy the pasture on full turnout, so the dry lot was necessary to rest the pasture. For several years my horses lived in the dry lot all winter and I opened a gate to the highest and driest acre for about eight hours every day as long as the ground wasn't too wet. My chore time was drastically cut down compared to overnight stalling because I no longer did night check and I only had to skim manure off the stonedust daily rather than sifting through bedding and cleaning urine spots. One winter when I had two horses that didn't need blankets or much grain, I started feeding them grain only in the afternoons (in feed bags, in the dry lot) so that my morning chores were reduced to going outside in my work clothes and opening a gate! Have I mentioned how much I love my dry lot??

Well, this past winter my "efficiency" (okay fine, laziness) rose to new levels... I decided to see what would happen if I let my two horses have full access to my top acre for the whole winter. (Partially this was due to a desire to cut down on chores, and partially it was because I have a new Thoroughbred who acts like he's starting the Kentucky Derby every time you open a gate. He's not rude but he does like to gallop around and buck, and I was worried about him slipping and getting hurt. If the gate just stays open all the time, there's no novelty and no moment of, "Woo hoo, I'm free!" excitement.) Every spring my fields grow more grass than the horses know what to do with, so I was hoping the top acre would survive the additional wear and tear.

Spring is here and I can now say that my experiment was a great success! The horses were happy to come and go as they pleased, nobody ran the Kentucky Derby every morning, I didn't have to clean quite as much manure because they spent more time out in the pasture, and the field survived very well. I know I got lucky because we had a short, mild winter, but according to NOAA we did get average precipitation (no real snow though!). Here's what the top acre of pasture has looked like over the past few months:

December 30th: The gate area is gross and mucky but the mud was never ankle-deep like I've experienced at other farms. When it's dry enough I'm definitely going to add some gravel/stonedust outside the gate to prepare for next winter.

March 10th: Spring is almost here and the bare spot around the gate has stayed about the same size, though it's dry and firm now. The rest of the field is eaten down but not very torn up.

March 27th: Wow, what a difference 17 days makes this time of year! The grass has turned green and overall I think this acre looks pretty good considering how much use it got all winter.

April 7: The top acre has been freshly mown because the roughs were already getting tall. After mowing, I seeded the bare spots with some tall fescue and then used the chain harrow to break up all the winter manure and work the seeds into the soil a little. I happened to time the harrowing perfectly after a small amount of rain made the previously-firm soil soft enough to cover the seed but not mushy enough to worry about tire marks. The horses are now grazing another acre and I'm curious to see how this one rebounds over the next month or so.

Interestingly, this little experiment did not greatly affect hay consumption, which suggests that winter grazing has more recreational than nutritional value for the horses. This winter between January and March the two horses ate 140 small square bales, generally provided at the rate of half of a square bale each morning and a full bale in the afternoon. The last comparable winter (when I had two horses living out full-time and eating square bales) was 2017, when during January and March the horses ate 161 small square bales. The slight reduction probably has less to do with pasture access and more to do with three other factors: 1) my failed attempt at round bales this year reducing January's square bale count somewhat; 2) my new 1,200-lb Thoroughbred replacing the 1,600-lb Hanoverian (no exaggeration, this weight is from a scale at the clinic!) that I had in 2017; and 3) Dominick the Donkey not being included in the 2020 consumption because he has moved into a separate paddock with his new buddy Lancelot.

So far I'm still allowing the horses 24/7 access to grass (on an acre that has rested all winter) and it's interesting to observe how they spend their time while I've been working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the grass is amazing right now and they do graze a lot, they spend plenty of time just standing under a tree hanging out, lying down napping in the sun, and even munching on the hay that I continue to provide (though at a much lower rate of half a bale every few days or whenever they clean it up). This somewhat allays my fears about them overindulging on the rich spring grass.

April 5th: the boys take a break from the spring grass to relax in the sun.

Speaking of overindulgence, here is what the research shows about horses' grazing patterns:

"It is estimated that a horse spends about 10 to 17 hours each day grazing, and this is broken up into about 15 to 20 grazing periods." (https://ker.com/equinews/grazing-behavior-horses/) This suggests that 24/7 turnout might not actually result in much more grazing time than overnight 16-hour turnout.

"At varying levels of pasture turnout, an 1100 lb (500 kg) horse will consume the following amounts of grass dry matter (all horses were given free choice hay when removed from pasture):

• 24 hours/day: 0.77 lb per hour (0.35 kg/hr)
• 9 hours/day: 1.32 lb/hr (0.6 kg/hr)
• 6 hours/day: 1.65 lb/hr (0.75 kg/hr)
• 3 hours/day: 2.2 lb/hr (1.0 kg/hr)

The less time you allow for pasture grazing, the more excited your horse will be at the opportunity to have fresh grass and he will eat nearly three times faster than if he had access to pasture 24/7." (https://www.horsejournals.com/horses-graze-pasture-247-eat-more-slowly)

I'm hoping that knowing the grass is always there the horses will self-regulate appropriately, and so far it seems to be working. My plan is to leave them out 24/7 until the heat and flies get bad, and then switch to my normal summer schedule of stalling them during the day (with access to the corral) and turning them out at night. Then when it cools off in the fall I'll turn them back out and enjoy not cleaning stalls for another 7-8 months!

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how the winter went and will probably try the same thing again next year, although I'm sure I won't get so lucky with such mild temperatures two years in a row. If you're curious, this is what NOAA has to say about temperature and precipitation between October 2019 and March 2020, compared to averages:

January 2021 update: In September when the ground was nice and firm, I added a stonedust pad to the gate area of my "winter paddock" to mitigate the winter mud situation. I used my compact tractor to remove a rectangle of grass and topsoil (not at all evenly or professionally, and probably deeper than necessary, but oh well) and then filled it in with stonedust. It took about three-quarters of a 22-ton load of stonedust. Here are some photos of the process:

I tried to excavate out to where at least most of the mud accumulated last winter.

That's a pretty big pile of stone!

The stonedust is about halfway spread now and I'm realizing how much I overestimated my needs. I actually almost ordered two dump truck loads but am very glad that I started with only one! I ended up using the rest of the pile to improve the footing in the run-in shed and spot fill some areas on the path that had suffered erosion.

I gave the new stonedust weeks to get rained on and settle, but when I first turned the horses out in that field they still left very, very deep hoof prints.

I drove across the pad with the tractor for 10-15 minutes and in this photo taken two days after the previous one, you can see that the stonedust has compacted considerably and the horses are leaving much shallower hoof prints. I may have to repeat the compaction periodically but it's well worth it to minimize mud at the gate.