Way handy they loaded it for you.

"a half hour to unload it with a pitchfork"

Like a gym membership but free... and with benefits!

Those will be some happy worms for sure.

Nice score, and MUCH cheaper than the 'free' fresh manure I was using!

Good luck.

WormsRUsWormsRUs, yes certainly a good workout and not so long as to leave you dead tired. More like a nice cardio routine on the elliptical.

Mendopete, I hear ya on the cheaper. The guy at the rescue told me he was going through $1,000 of feed every 6 days... wow! I will have a $100,000 worm bed by the time I am done :)

Just unloaded the second haul. Tomorrow will be another one trip day as I have a lot of work in the morning but hoping Thursday and Friday will be at least two trips a day. I smell like somebody stepped in something, its great.

I do realize it is going to take years to really get this going but once it is in full swing we will be making VC on an industrial scale and thats going to turn this chunk of sand into an oasis.

Two more loads this afternoon so pushing into 15 to 20 yds on the running total. Was only planning one load for today but we have some overcast skies so I opted out of working on the chicken coop because my pulling out lots of tools increases the chance of rain and as much as it is a good thing for us it isnt good for my tools.

Filled the truck today so I can check mileage and get a better idea of actual cost per yd. Also noted it is almost exactly 15 miles door to door so a 30 mile round trip. Going to check this weekend on borrowing a dump trailer as this will help reduce the fuel cost and greatly increase the volume we can import with the time we have available. Big plus on the not having to fork unload it too. Going to keep going all out with available time for the next week then take a break from hauling and get back to the other chores that have been slightly pushed aside. Plus the Rescue we are hauling from has had some small troubles with the county so we are helping them at the same time and its always nice to be able to not only help out others but come out ahead while doing it. Hmm, thought 'come out smelling like a rose' but that didnt quite fit the situation, The Wife and Daughter are tolerating me at this point ;)

I do have one 40' long wall framed, finished that yesterday after getting the afternoon load of HM. Have one more 40' wall and four 10' walls to add to the pile and the plan is for this weekend to be tipping them all up and putting the roof on. Went with the HD Red coated metal for the roof. That has been a huge chore right in the middle of all of the getting ready for garden and now time is pressing as there are chicks that are going to need more space very soon and more chicks coming.

For my part the chickens are mainly another manure source, for The Mrs they are a fun diversion and she wants to be able to provide folks with an healthy, attractive (multicolored) AND affordable option to store bought eggs. Really I have never been big on keeping hens but as a component in the diversity part of the equation they certainly earn their keep with their exit end and their tilling nature. Really looking forward to having an enormous compost pile for them to constantly work over, one more source for next springs garden nourishment.

Well, have to go fork that **stuff** off the truck now... breaks over.

Double securing chicks security might be the priority now as predators are probably lining up with an eye towards them. I have not had chicks so my post is not expert advice.

The coop I am building is on a concrete footing 1 foot deep. The run will have welded wire for the first 4' and chicken wire 4' up from that along with an apron buried around the perimeter. We dont have an overly aggressive predator problem here but we do have the occasional raccoon, bobcat, mountain lion and bear along with smaller pests such as rats, mice and snakes. One thing I am debating is an open top for the runs as we do have birds of prey. Again none of these in large numbers and so far our current coop has worked out well.

Aside from the chicken grabbing pests one of the big troubles is the mice. I am going to do all I can to keep them out of the feed as that can quickly escalate feed costs as it runs off into a burrow somewhere. We are trying to make all of this happen without poisons because we are starting to get quite a lot of our own food out of this ground so leaning to keeping things clean is becoming more and more important to us. A bucket mouse trap has been pretty effective in the greenhouse, myself I dump them for the chickens but if the Daughter finds them first she cans them and releases in a field on her way to work. The chickens love them and if it were not for the fact they are active when the hens are sleeping we would have zero mice because they are better than the cats about catching and they dont play its all about get in ma belly.

"dump trailer" It comes to mind to mention... does the dump trailer have four wheels? If not does it put tongue weight on the tow vehicle? If there is already weight in the bed check the numbers. But I bet you probably already know this. Also, check the maximum tow weight. They do the calculations with drivers who weigh like nothing driving vehicles with no added items such as pine tree air fresheners or dangling baby shoes or fuzzy dice even. Often vehicles for towing have special radiator cooling and additional upgrades in a package. In my opinion the question is not can the vehicle tow the weight. The real question is can the vehicle's breaks stop the weight. Ideally one only tows half or 3/4th the maximum tow rate. I am also wondering if in the future when your ground has a bit of fertility you can save the gas and the hauling by growing your own manure. Or pre-manure. Plants that you chop and drop such as comfrey (Spell check hates everything I love.) that work for you by roots that bring nutrients up from far in the ground. Maybe consider growing a few plants that you can harvest thousands and thousands of seed from to broadcast to chop and drop. Or maybe an animal could harvest it for you and do product placement for you too. The grass is still greener where years ago I added manure and compost for years. Starting back gardening a bit now but in areas I want to improve. I would hate to dig up the tiny bit of grass that actually is good grass :-)

Yes tongue weight has to be considered and you always want tongue weight on a trailer but it is only a small portion of the total load. Max tow weight has more to do with stopping ability, this truck has no issues at all with being loaded. It also has a compression brake so being conscious and anticipating much of the braking can be taken up with that.

Growing our own fertility is the end goal. I have been propagating our comfrey like crazy and a lot of this HM will be going into fertile holes for comfrey. Basically a hole shovel round and as deep as I can easily scoop the dirt is filled with manure and a sprouted cutting is planted there. I think somewhere between 500 and 1000 comfrey plants will find home here in the next year or two.

The widespread seeding is something else we are working on. Going to collect seed from a wide variety of plants like onion, radish, carrots, flowers or anything else that is easy to get seed from and use that in a mix that will be broadcast in an attempt to out compete local weeds. I see it is weed replacement therapy where we end up with weeds we like. One plant that we are establishing is buckwheat as it is self seeding, grows incredibly fast and is useful in terms of feed for the hens and green material for composting.

We are just scratching the surface of all of this having started in earnest well into the growing season last year with both the worms and the gardening. This will be our first real year season wise and next year will be our first year with abundant OM to work with thanks to the HM now being hauled in.

Speaking of HM, I had been seeing a guy working his garden which is just off the highway as I have been making these trips. This morning I stopped and asked him if he wanted a load of HM and let him know when I would be back through this afternoon. He was quite thrilled to get a nice pile of manure for his garden and since it was only about two miles from where I pick it up cost me nothing but a few minutes of my time. Helps the Horse rescue in getting rid of yet one more load too so it was wins all around. Will probably drop another load there next week and will look forward to watching his garden over the summer knowing I got to play a small part in it. We also gave him a bag of seeds from our excess, bought 1/4lb of a lot of seeds where it was just slightly more than the 1oz price and have given away a LOT of seeds to folks who might otherwise not have so much for planting.

So with that I still got two loads hauled today (have my work day mixed in there too) and finished framing the remaining walls for the new coop. The Wife and Daughter helped me this evening and just as dark was upon us we were able to walk away with all of the walls standing for a 10' x 40' coop. It is sectioned with two walls inside so there is a 10 x 12 room at each end for coops and a 10 x 16 toolroom in the center that will serve for brooding, feed and tack storage and hopefully a temperature controlled cabinet for mealworms. Have our first round of mealie babies coming on now and it is incredible how many of those tiny buggers there are. Pushing for a production rate of 10lbs a week on these (another great source of poo). Thing is mealworms really are no $ savings over chicken feed but it is a great addition to their diet and they will absolutely do tricks for them so it is worth the time and cost.

I figured you had it all under control. I was just doing a safety request. I am so happy to see you already know what I was talking about and considered and was already dealt with it. My concern is now cast aside. I am happy and no longer concerned. Thank you for the detailed reply.

"Growing our own fertility is the end goal. I have been propagating our comfrey like crazy and a lot of this HM will be going into fertile holes for comfrey. Basically a hole shovel round and as deep as I can easily scoop the dirt is filled with manure and a sprouted cutting is planted there. I think somewhere between 500 and 1000 comfrey plants will find home here in the next year or two." We are on the same page, verse, and line there. Same book, too. That is the end goal. You probably know you are doing permaculture. I might like to see a bit of bio char in that system. Even just a 50 pound bag of cowboy charcoal. Cook with most and the kibbles and bits size pieces put into the garden or bin. Maybe you posted about the confrey before and I am remembering your own post and advising you of it? smile

"The widespread seeding ,... et all" We are obviously on the same page.

"guy working his garden" Manna from heaven... but in the form of horse hockey. :-) Perhaps you both have a lot in common and I bet he invites you to dinner and walks you around his garden. Bring a nice bottle of wine or a ferment of garlic cloves in wild, organic, raw honey. Make a jar for yourself too. Do this now as it only starts to taste like a bit of heaven in 15 weeks. The only issue is while waiting the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLoyg3JKRQ anticipation. Sorry, some of you were not born yet.

"easy to get seed" 50 pound sunflower seed to feed the birds or any bird seed. Seeds of orange or apples. Does not have to survive winter. Grocery store seeds like beans. Maybe participate in online seed swaps. A bit better than dollar stores may have wild flower seeds in large amount for a great price. Walmart has .20 cent seed packages. They hide it way in the corner in the back. Ask somebody where they are. They are not with the other $$seeds. There are less seeds in each packet but really how many zucchini plants do you really need? Provides the ability to purchase a great variety of seeds to see what survives. Go to wild fields nearby and harvest seed for free.

Possibly the guy with the garden has a wife and his wife may have a lot in common with your wife. Great friendship possibility for the women folk there. I bet he knows something you would not know (information gain in the future) had you not helped at just the right time with just the right stuff today.

"This morning I stopped and asked him" You do realize that 99 per cent of people would be paranoid, afraid to reach out like that. Or if they were him and a stranger stopped by offering strange gold, accept on his part. Good for you and him. Not so good for human chickens to reach out and be human. You have the right stuff.

"bag of seeds" this guy is going to love you. All because he won the lottery because he was WORKING in his garden. Others were not. He won.

I have mentioned the comfrey a few times. Since then I have also saw with my own eyes how the worms love to live in it.

The biochar I have thought about many times since your first mention of it to me. I kind of see it as a next step sort of addition rather than an initial step, get the life going then give it highrises to live in. As for fifty lbs... ha, when i do get to that step it will be in a way that will make an impact. There seems to be so many plus points there not the least of which is that once in place it is just there. Kind of a one and done sort of thing.

"turn this chunk of sand into an oasis." many posters may not be able to appreciate the difficulty of this process. I have beach sand and not beach. I appreciate this.

Beach or sugar sand would even be worse than what we have, I do come across pockets of washed sand but most of our ground does have some level of silt mixed into a very course almost gravelly sand.

Sounds like both of our cures are the OM in huge amounts. have you ever tried wood chips from tree trimming services? If you have space for them they are great. Simply by spreading chips over to of the ground it helps hold moisture near the surface and they begin to break down quickly. I find they are a bit coarse from the large chipper though and run them through a smaller chipper to further reduce them. An option would be to sift them and use the larger pieces for biochar. Woodchip collection is another very large scale component of our OM increase project, we just have to wait until they are working in our area again. Most of our garden this year is based on nearly decade old chips that I mixed last year with bagged steer and fresh chicken manure, not ideal in any fashion but much better than native. Pulling for next year to be the above with bagged steer replaced with HM for the bulk and of course long term is VC but unless someone brings several dump trucks by for us that will be several years down the road.

About the mention of folks being afraid or just not caring enough to approach strangers. I am the guy who pulls over during his hour and half commute home after a day of working in 100F+ sun to help you change a tire, give you some gas or tow push your car off the road. or the guy who will tell you in the grocery store checkout line about some deal over the item that you have in your cart. I really dont have any issues approaching anyone when I perceive an opportunity to help them along, huge fan of pay it forward and relish in seeing others succeed. While this sometimes leads to leaving yourself to being taken advantage of to shield yourself from that means many missed opportunities to help those truely in need.

Oh, and you dont realize how much he will relish that bag of seeds if he utilizes it. There is enough seed there and he has enough room to be at market garden scale on a variety of items. You dont realize how much seed 1/4lb is until you start buying them that way, haha, we all laughed when we filled a 60qt tote and got a total count of 150 different flowers and vegetables in our seed buying spree last winter. Warm is here now too which is great, looks like one more cool dip possibly coming but above freezing for this one then it should turn to sun sun sun.

"An option would be to sift them and use the larger pieces for biochar." What a great idea!

Finished up hauling for this go around on Sunday. Ended up 14 or 15 loads so right close to 50 cu yds of dry aged HM.

Equinox, I keep thinkin about the biochar. I have lots of barrels around I can make a large cooker easy enough. Also have a big (maybe 24" diameter) eucalyptus tree I planted as a twig that beetles killed and I need to cut it down. That would make a lot of char though the larger wood chips would probably be easier to cook them down. maybe this winter I will come back to this idea and since it is always in the back of my mind putting things together so they will be ready might be doable.

As I have mentioned before, for me to get interested in anything along the lines of improvements I need to do them on a large scale to cover ground with them. With the biochar that means maybe a few cu yds of this material. Would love to have that available next spring to mix into maybe 30 yds or more of great compost.

I was just now looking at the picture you posted and thinking... So I was surprised to see you post about biochar you remembered posts about. Making biochar is not as fun as it looks on... I would say TV but who watches that old thing anymore, Youtube, :-). If you charcoal grill and if you like lump charcoal as opposed to briquettes, just the smaller pieces and dust will be good even in a huge pile. Looking at the picture I thinking you are gonna need more seeds. I'm thinking permaculture in dry situations uses nurse trees or plants. These are not the intended trees or plants but trees or plants that create an environment (shade) better suited to what you really want planted. Ideally things would be planted in guilds or little happy family groups of various plants all with a different job to contribute to the group. Collecting free seed from local vegetation might be a good start. I see you have a nice micro forest started there. Do those trees have seeds? I'm thinking seed balls. Seeds from free or bulk sources, vermicompost, clay.

Oh yeah. Nice mountain you have there. Too bad it is blocking your view of the other side. The worms will have that thing flattened right out for you in a few eons. :-) I'm thinking blue mountains, maybe use blue worms.

As for the eucalyptus tree I think there is a higher use for it than biochar. Did you notice there is not a lot of trees there? Possibly eucalyptus has some magic qualities due to oil or something that might make it not suited. So this information is generic for trees if you only have one. I think that tree is not low value waste material which is used for biochar. I think that tree is gold. Think "Got Hugelkultur?" Hugelkultur as you probably know is simply buried wood. Similar to biochar but not as long lasting but maybe more immediate. But... I would not even cut it down. I think there is great value of the dead roots still in the ground. As the tree decomposes these are pathways for good stuff far in the ground to move up to the growing zone. Can you pile organic material with the tree right in the middle of it? Then toss in seed balls? The structure of the tree as it breaks down can be a conduit or superhighway for resources to travel on via plant roots, or mycelium. The tree had access to water that the dead roots may still touch. I'm thinking you are trying to turn a bit of the desert into not a desert.

The tree while it has substantial girth at the base is not all that much mass. I dont want it falling is why i will cut it but the stump will remain. It is located by our drive so not really an area we have immediate interest in a growing zone, have a huge banks rose out there that is getting close to 20' diameter and might put some more of that in.

Have looked into hugel and am going to try a small bed using fallen Joshua, that wood is very fibrous and seems to never rot so should be good for the purpose.

Have a lot of cuttings in the greenhouse that are leafing. I am hoping they are makin roots. Have Pomegranate from Armenia, Chinese Pecan, a lot of Wisteria and grape I took cutting from our plants, Both Black and White Mulberry, some scrub tree from down alongside the road that we saw with a flush of purple flowers and of course some of the Banks Rose. Will be quite busy planting if any number of these cuttings produce roots.

The trees in that picture are Joshua, they are extremely slow growing though they do make seed. We have loads of different trees, shrubs and plants we purchased seeds for last winter. Kind of went a bit crazy honestly. I have shared a lot of the see because when buying it is like$6.00 for an ounce or $10.00 for a quarter pound. Who really needs a quarter pound of carrot seeds let alone 6 different varieties?

Anyhow it has been easy to find folks who were very appreciative of getting a large bag of labeled seeds in an alarming variety (I think we ended up with over 150 different types of seeds).

Speaking of seeds, was at my dads last night. He gave me a bag with some seeds in it. I looked at them when I got home and dates were like 1983, haha. Going to toss them out somewhere and put water to them and see what we get.

The mountains in the picture pretty much look the same way any direction you look from here as we are in a fairly small valley. The peaks range from 5 to 8K feet and we are at 3K. It really is beautiful if you like the bare mountains, the air is clean and it is quiet. Other than the wind which can get unbearable at times it is tough not to love it here.

Once again, I think this is the third time now, we are in agreement as to thoughts on possible ways to increase life in the desert. Or maybe the world needs deserts? I'm not sure. Maybe greening the deserts is mean to deserts. Yes on the bulk seed. Great you are sharing it. Even 1983 seeds would be great in the mix even as just filler for a seed ball party. People just probably love dumping in a bit of this and a bit of that into the mixture. And who knows... you just might end up with A Lonely Little Petunia In An Onion Patch! Smile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW1HFWpGgC0

Finally got around to chopping that old water tank. It is 10' Diameter so that is nearly 80 sq ft of surface area and I cut it 16" tall so just over 100 cu ft or about 4 cu yds that it will hold.

http://www.nexev.com/gardening/worms/wormring_1.jpg

That was a tougher job than I thought it would be, my 52 y/o body doesnt seem to keep up with my 35 y/o thinking and that saw seems much heavier than it used to. Now that the top is off though it will be easier to cut the remaining slices because the band of steel that is left is sitting level and smooshed somewhat. Looks like there might be about 5 or so 16" slices left though I did not measure it. If we end up with 6 of these beds that would be one heck of a start.

Here it is in place and leveling. The extra dirt from inside went around the outside bringing the ground up to about 6" from the top on the far side. Will probably backfill all the way around eventually as it will help keep temperatures stable.

http://www.nexev.com/gardening/worms/wormring_2.jpg

With 5 big sloppy wet wheelbarrow loads of HM poured in it barely makes a small slice of the pie. Put the worms in on one side of the wedge and gave them a little cover. Will cut some carpet tomorrow for them.

http://www.nexev.com/gardening/worms/wormring_4.jpg

My thought was to carry this around the circle feeding the leading edge then when it begins to catch up start removing as much as I am adding so once full it would be like a pie with a single slice missing and that slice would work its way around the ring. Pete suggested to me feeding both sides and when they meet on the far side harvest half then start working back the other way. That makes a lot of sense in that it would double the amount of leading edge. Not sure which way I will end up going but at least the worms are at long last in their bed, I did my part in hauling tons of HM and providing them with an idyllic locale now its up to them to get busy on the eatin an procreatin end of things.

This has been tough to get to as I have been pushing to finish the chicken coop and just in time on that as those little ones grow so unbelievably fast. The coop is up now and 50 little ones are in the two rooms at the ends, the center storage room still needs finished but I have plenty of time on that. The runs are next, lots of poles to set and wire to put up. There are a couple pictures here if anyone is interested.

http://www.nexev.com/chickens/coop_3.jpg
http://www.nexev.com/chickens/coop_4.jpg
http://www.nexev.com/chickens/coop_5.jpg
http://www.nexev.com/chickens/coop_6.jpg

In that last picture you can see a framed out window, the coops at each end of the building will have their nest boxes there and the back will open from inside the center room where the fridge will be so the eggs can be collected and easily put away within steps and all inside.

The two on the perch are a couple of the French Black Copper Marans the Wife hatched, it was a real crackup building those perches as the Plymouth Barred Rocks would not stay off of them "while" I was building them. You would think the hammer driver would have kept them away but I think they liked it.

Sorry all the pictures are linked but honestly I dont care for posting pictures for them to become someone elses property. I know there is nothin much special about them but they are mine so I like to keep them in my own house ;)

"nest boxes there and the back will open from inside the center room where the fridge will be so the eggs can be collected and easily put away within steps and all inside." Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these egg collectors from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. That will make egg collection nice.

Is that rocks with soil that you're hauling there?

Hey Organic, the 'Soil' is Horse Manure and those would be horse apples. Seems a horse coats its excrement with a preservative and thats why the lumps tend to stick around even when aged and dry.

If it gets too hot in your area it's a good idea to cover your manure with hay. I brought a f250 truckload of HM to my house last week. I can't believe how fast my plants are growing and how happy my worms are. They love that stuff.

I do have carpet over the bed, for the afternoon they now have shade and I water the carpet every morning. Once the large ring is full later this summer topping it up with straw will probably happen since we have plenty from cleaning the chicken coop out. Our new coop is on dirt floor and we are trying a deep litter in which means not so much straw coming out. The new runs have a large enough yard for a compost pile in with the hens so when we do change out their straw the old will go into their yard pile as we try and build that up.

The compost pile in with the chickens looks to be a win all around since they will till it all day long and add their own special blend and they find lots of insects in the pile. When these piles mature I will introduce worms to them along with a safe area in the pile for another protein source.

Wish I could say our garden is off the hook with the HM but it has been a struggling start. We have had quite a lot of near hurricane force dry winds lately along with 15*F over normal temperatures, some plants are beginning to take hold so there is yet hope. The soil the garden is in was previously barren so its gonna take some time to build it. That is the other half of why I have bothered to haul in so much HM, our sand here eats it so fast it is just short of amazing. I have put over 40 cu yds (500 bags of home depot steer compost, 10 yds of very aged wood chips and 10 or more yds of HM) of OM into the garden since starting it last year and look at it and wonder where it is. Planning on this being a very different story next year as the worm beds and the chicken composting get into full swing.

If I was in that situation I would make some raised beds with cardboard at the bottom to prevent roots from getting into the unfertil soil. Eventually the cardboard will decompose from all the water + worm leache that has been soaking through the cardboard and by the time that happens you will probably have good soil underneath. If it's really that bad I would even dig some holes, fill them up with organic untreated mulch and then do put the raised beds with the cardboard method over the mulch. By the time any roots make it through the cardboard you'll have decomposting mulch that has been slowly releasing nutrients into the soil underneath. You can't go wrong with that.

I dont understand why attempt to prevent the roots from reaching the barren soil below? Even with little to no OM in that soil they can still draw minerals from it right?

We have 6 5' x 10' raised beds, just one block high right now. We also have a few hundred feet of rows, two rows together with wide paths between the pairs of two. The raised beds got most of the compost pile I made last winter, the rows are actually trenches filled with composted horse manure. The squash and pumpkins are beginning to take hold and some of the hot peppers are beginning to grow. Tomatoes are getting their first flowers though the plants are still quite small. Salad greens planted early just never put on much and will probably be done soon when the heat really sets in but the swiss chard is starting to put on and grew all summer long last year.

The slow releasing part is what we are counting on, that it will continue to get better each year both the soil and our compost ingredients. I continue to find EH around the garden so we must be heading in the right direction, just gonna take time in getting there.