Since you do ask the question about the safety of excrement--whether it be from a dog, a horse, a gazelle or a deer, the question remains how safe is such poop from animals. If you believe Allen the deer only eats foliage plants and doesn't have in them dangerous pathogens that can transmit possible dangerous effects to humans then ...go ahead, put it into your compost that you use on your lawns, your gardens, your vegetables, your flowers. If you believe otherwise, then use it in a separate compost pile and use it in a year's time when it has aged and lost its heat. If you feel you must use a manure in your compost, then I suggest you start a bunny farm and let rabbits be the source of garden goodness. A question though, do you have deer in such numbers that their droppings are a source of volume that could increase the effects in yuor compost pile to any extent.

Our electric bills aren't terrible, anywhere from $350-$550 a month (until the proposed 47% increase kicks in). The higher ones are in the summer because of the AC. It was the $1200 water bill we just got for this quarter that is the killer! I thought DH was going to have a coronary when he opened the envelope. If there's another drought next year I'm letting the plants die and the pool evaporate! lol There is a thingy that you can buy for the outdoor water faucets that lets WSSC know that the water isn't going back into the sewer system which is what you are actually charged for. I think they run a few hundred bucks each but might be a good idea. I wish we had installed them at the beginning of the season. Karyn

Compost made from plant wastes tends to be neutral. If you have a situation in your garden where you feel that a product such as Humate would be useful, it would probably work better if you mixed it with the finished compost from your heap just before you need to apply it. If you look at some of the 'special' growing medium recipes you'll see things such as 'one bucket of mature compost, one cup of lime, one tablespoon of slow release pellets 10-10-10' etc. All added just before use with plant material - otherwise it can leach away with watering, rain or snow, even in a compost heap. When you come to take plant matter from the area that you treated with compost and Humate, later, those plants will have the mineral uptake from the product and you will be adding those minerals to the compost heap.

Gumby, I'm trying to accomplish both. The clay here is ridiculous; it took unreasonable amounts of work to prepare the first plot for growing veggies and it's still not in great condition. For this second plot I'm working on, I want to kill the weeds the low-effort way, and leave their OM (and much more) there as soil improvent. I started with a scythe to cut the weeds down as close to the ground as possible, then laid down two layers of corrugated cardboard, flat and overlapping. On top of that I placed shredded weeds and lawn clippings, spoiled fruit and veg, coffee grounds, shredded pine cones and needles, and a little corn meal. Next I put on 1.5 Ford Ranger beds full of assorted cardboard, soaked, torn and crumpled. Now I'm in the process of adding the clippings from mowing the lawn yesterday (a lot, it got about a foot tall and it's a big lawn). After that I'll place a bag of brown dead leaves that have already been rotting for a while, and any others I find in the neighborhood. I mean to leave this in place for a year, and add to it all year as OM comes my way, then till the sufficiently decomposed stuff into the ground (or just plant straight in it), and move any excess or immature compost to another site. I want the pile aerobically active and hot, so it breaks down material fast (we generate a lot of food waste with a picky child in particular), doesn't stink the place up (it's near the front porch), and attracts/shelters worms and other bugs during the winter freeze. I'm not sure how thick I'll need it to be, in order to self-insulate and contain the aerobic bacteria's thermal output.