jjdbike you are in the heart of horse country! Sure many a local barn is near you with lots and lots of free and aged and new manure. I have horses and a wonderful pile. Starting my new beds with the compost. Wonderful stuff. Mine was a hot pile and at 6 months is ready to go. Suggest double bagging and bring home less then 5 gal per bag, small easy and not to heavy. I have a truck and bring home bags in it for easy carrying to the garden. Turned the pile once a week and in a long row. When it reaches the end of the row it isready to go. Rick Tack shop should benear you and if you can find the notice board will have stables in the area with stalls for rent. ie stables in the area, and with phone#s to call. You can even shop around for one that uses just straw for bedding or sawdust. Also you may be able to get mushroom soil in your area. It is the most perfect thing to get your hands on. Just a few suggestions. ML

I wonder if anyone has noticed that not a single match has been made on this thread between a person with extra dirt and a person who needs it who are both close to each other. Not surprising. I suggest using your local Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, etc. or the matching sites linked in this thread.

Cities is California with large horse populations are cracking down on keeping piles of horse manure sitting around. Plus as farmland is converted to housing developments the farmers who used to take the manure aren't around anymore. This has brought the price of commercially made compost way down. I just bought 10 cubic yards of the best compost I ever saw, fully composted and fine screened with no soda cans or broken glass or plastic bags mixed in with it like you usually find in bulk compost for $8 a cubic yard plus $35 delivery. It came from a horse boarding ranch that had 200 horses and the driver said they made about 100 cubic yards a week, and the only stuff in it was horse manure, wood shavings and some straw, but the straw was completely composted so you couldn't even see it. If you were to try to make 10 cubic yards of finished compost yourself I bet it would take most of you a couple of years and many, many hours of work. I would rather buy this stuff than get the free stuff from the city where you have no idea of what went into it, plus you have to haul it yourself. I have heard of people getting their gardens wiped out because the free stuff contained grass clippings with weed killer on it. Plus if the green waste came from my yard it would have a heck of a lot of weed seeds in it, the weeds coming from poorly composted compost I bought before. But the stuff I just bought is state certified and they have to measure the temperature of their piles three times a day to be sure all weed seeds are killed. Plus a pile will get much hotter when its eight feet high and 20 feet wide and 50 feet long, and turned over as needed with a front loader.

Ok, got a hold of someone at the main Hillsborough County office, who patched me over to someone at the extension service that knew what I was talking about. She wasn't sure, so gave me directions to the Falkenburg Rd site. Talked to a guy out there, and he said that they're selling the stuff for $15 per front-end loader bucket, about 5 cubic yards. He says that their biggest customer is a major nationwide lawn supply company that ages the stuff more, bags it and sells it as potting soil! He said they used to age it for 5 to 7 weeks, but that they can't keep up with demand so they are shipping it early to the lawn products company (I won't mention their name in case I mis-heard him.) When it comes out of the machine as fines, it's piled into long piles, and soaked down daily for about a week, then turned and allowed to cook some more. They usually turn it again after two weeks, but the company is buying it after the first two weeks of "cooking." Now I need to find a big pickup truck and trailer to borrow, and get me a couple of loads! I figure I can load the raised beds up, keep it damp and cover with black plastic sheets to kill any weeds, and be ready for large-scale planting in July or August.