Gathering Free Compost For The Garden

Today we had a very lazy afternoon, which we fully agreed was much deserved, having had a challenging day yesterday ~ car trouble and a pet emergency, not to mention heavy work schedules. So we lounged about, browsed online, had some refreshing homemade strawberry mint tea (mmm, tastes like summer!) and sat on the porch, listening to the sounds of the birds and people going about their day.

Then we decided it was time for some healing earth therapy (i.e. time to play in the dirt) so we went to my sister's house to dig up a load of compost. We have those beautiful heirloom tomato plants sitting in our den, still in their seedling cups, just begging for some deep, rich soil to grow in. But we currently lack the funds to buy all the ingredients we like to put into the new garden beds, especially the rather expensive organic compost we priced last week.

A limited budget means we have to get creative with solutions and often we'll end up with a better plan than we originally thought of. Fortunately, my sister has a large field next to her house and she used to keep horses there. They would frequently stand in their favorite spot next to the gate, awaiting a treat and a friendly nuzzle, and she fed them hay there during the winter. They would graze and wait for her to come home, leaving behind their deposits. This area also collects a lot of leaf litter during the fall when the winds whip through the field and pile large mounds of fallen leaves into the corner of the fence line.

The combination of all these activities (hay, leaves, and manure) has resulted in deep layers of natural decaying material. The horses have been moved to another field so now it's a huge area of fully cured compost. The soil is rich and black, loamy, and several inches deep ~ perfect for the garden and best of all it was free for the taking.

The soil had not been worked in over a year so we loosened it up first and then shoveled a large load of this compost onto our trailer. As we turned over the compost we found dozens and dozens of our friends, the red wiggler earthworms. This was a very happy find because we have just decided to start vermicomposting again. Now we have a fresh batch of earthworms to get things going.

Based on the towing capacity of the van and the typical strain we notice when we haul a half ton of wood pellets, we think we got about 1300 pounds of soil. That's not a precise measurement, but give or take a hundred pounds, we clearly have lots of compost to play with now!