The Rural Voice, 2004-08, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
water wells"
104 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Farm organic matter from municipal gard waste
Robert
Mercer was
editor of the
Broadwater
Market Letter
and
commentator
for 25 years.
One of the stops of this year's
Vancouver Island farm tour was at
Mitchell Brothers Farm in Central
Saanich on the way to the Victoria
airport.
This market garden farm grows
about 30 different vegetable crops,
plus additional flowers. fruits and
berries. It also ships over 1.000 bins
of pumpkins to grocery chains in the
fall. The 400 -acre farm needs
abundant water and lots of humus in
the soil to hold the water and reduce
the run-off and soil erosion.
The soil, especially on the hills.
has lost much of the original organic
matter since the trees were cleared by
Terry Mitchell's father and
grandfather. At that time, the forest
floor left 8 - 10 inches of debris on
top of the stony soil.
Soils on the farm range from
sandy to clay with some double
cropping stressing the need for
irrigation and added organic matter.
To combat this need Terry has
contracted with two local municipal
governments to take yard and garden
waste at a price that he says is about
half the commercial tip rate.
This tangled mass of grass
clippings, prunings, branches, roots
and stumps arrives at his composting
yard and is mechanically fed into a
600 hp tub -grinder. This machine
pounds, chops and spits out a course
brown humus that after three months
in large bunker -type piles, is ready
for farm use.
Terry estimates that the fee
income just about covers his costs of
making the "compost". The
equipment can grind six tonnes per
hour and he likes to spread it up to 10
inches deep. Although he is in the
fourth year of this program, he has
been only able to cover 30 - 40 acres
with this homemade humus. The need
is great, so no off -farm sales are
made to interested parties.
The compost piles are turned
every two weeks. regularly tested and
probed for heat. By adding water
when needed, and turning it often, the
internal temperature rises to 160°.
The resulting product is a dark
brown, clean -smelling chop, which to
me has almost a coarse corn silage
feel. So far tests have shown no
harmful levels of chemicals or
pollutants in the product or the
nearby ground water.
The fields on the hillsides have
been spread first with this organic
matter, and Terry says that since then
there has been less soil compaction,
and less water use as retention is
improved.
At the other stop on the farm tour,
there was a different approach to
retaining fibre on the farm. Stanhope
Dairy Farm was equipped with a
water -flush manure handling system.
Manure moves out of the barn with
the flush into large holding tanks. At
a later date it is separated out with the
"fines" stacked up for farm use or
sale.
With a milking herd of 160 - 180
head there is a lot of manure to
handle. Most of the fines are recycled
to the fields, but there is a constant
demand for the fines by makers of
commercial compost mixes.
This separated manure content
offshoot of the dairy operation is a
sideline "cash cow", and Rod Rendle
estimates annual returns to the off -
farm fines sales at $50,000 to
$60,000.0
Deablivie for the
September issue
of
The Ri ril Voice is
ANSNst 18, 2004