The Rural Voice, 1992-11, Page 35Screenings await composting outside
the Hensall facility.
must have for composting. Once that
is completed, the loader brings the
new material into the plant at one end
of the building and deposits it in the
end of each of the three channels.
That's where the huge processor
designed by Pos and built by Lee's
company begins its job. It is perhaps
more impressive sitting out in the
open than it is at work in the
channels. It looks a little like a huge
roto -tiller — one 20 feet wide by 14
feet long and nine feet high, weighing
six tons. The processor has 25, eight -
foot diameter flails, tipped with a
hardened steel, self -sharpening
sweep.
Once a day the huge machine,
powered by a diesel engine, churns
through the material in the channels
from one end to the other —
shredding, agitating, mixing and
aerating the composting materials.
Each time it moves down the
channel, it moves the material 10
feet. After 10 days, material that
started at one end of the channel ends
up at the other. It also ends up being
useable compost. The material will be
cured for a while to make sure the
composting process is complete but
the material can be used for
gardening and other needs.
The entire 4000 tons a year of
compost has been spoken for by
landscaping companies but until the
MOE gives its approval, the material
can't leave the property. Lee says
Ontario's standards are so strict,
some natural soils wouldn't pass the
test. But the standards can be a
strength as well as a problem for his
company and for Pos. If they can
meet Ontario's standards, they can
meet any in the world.
The project has
been set up
financially
strictly as a waste
disposal system
with the compost
given no value.
The compost
should be of the
quality of peat,
however, and
peat sells for $30-
$35 a cubic yard
meaning the
potential is large
for cutting operating costs by selling
the end-use product from the million
dollar plant.
As well as local dignitaries and
interested MOE personnel,
there were in the crowd at the
opening of the facility in mid-
October, people from across Ontario
and the U.S. who wanted to see the
plant in operation. Among those there
were people from some large farming
operations.
Pos says only very large farming
operations can afford to build a
similar plant for composting of
animal waste but then they don't need
to. He designed a smaller scale plant
for a Boston farmer for a fraction of
the cost of the Hensall facility.
For LH Resources, the success of
the Hensall operation could mean the
beginning of a huge boost to their
manufacturing operation. To learn all
they can from this pilot project and
work out any bugs in the system, LH
will operate the plant for the first
year. (It takes about 4-5 hours a day
to run the plant once the operation is
smoothed out). The company had
planned on having a few weeks to
break in slowly before the rush started
in September but weather problems
slowed down the completion of the
facility and the company only got full
use in early September. "Since then
trucks have been arriving every 30
minutes," Lee said.
If the system works as Lee and
Pos plan (and obviously the village of
Hensall, the local elevators and the
MOE hope), it will turn a problem
into an asset, and create a new local,
high-tech, internationally -competitive
manufacturer. All that from a bunch
of dirt, hulls, cracked grains and
weed seeds.0
Maynard Gingrich and family
Maynard and his family operate a 100 sow unit near Atwood. Maynard has
been buying Bodmin F1 gilts and HxD boars for about 4 years.
Last year he weaned 21.8 pigs/sow/year with an average 21 day litter weight
of 154 lbs.
"The gilts and sows desire and ability to eat while in the farrowing crate is why
the sows milk so well and we have such good litter weight," says Maynard. He
is also very happy with the soundness and longevity of the sows and boars.
For more information about the Bodmin Total Breeding Program contact:
Phil Smith 519-764-2898 (res.)
Boar Store 519-887-9206
Fax 519-764-2696
R.R. 5, Brussels, Ont. NOG 1H0
PROVEN GENETICS TODAY BETTER GENETICS TOMORROW
NOVEMBER 1992 31