 Welcome everyone to our farm scale composting workshop. Our presenter today is Jeff Endres, chair of the Ahara Pride Farms Incorporated. He serves as the chair on the board of directors, which in this Ahara Pride Farms is a farm-led, not-for-profit organization working to improve soil and water quality. Thank you Jeff. So thank you for having me and thanks to the sponsors for sponsoring this segment of the conference. When Stephanie first approached me about speaking, she was talking about the composting and sharing some things with the conference and after I committed she said I needed to talk for 90 minutes. So hopefully I've got enough information here and good information that keeps everybody energized and into this program and hopefully we all can get something out of it. We've been doing this for a while and but you know it's still a lot to learn. So Endres Berry Ridge Farms is I mean the would be the fourth generation farmers or third generation, yeah fourth generation moving to the fifth generation. This picture here of the farm was the house and the original dairy barn was built by my grandpa in 1913. The land has been in the family since, excuse me, since the late 1800s. Our farm is located in the Ahara Watershed and as my bio says we also chair the Ahara Pride Farms farmer led organization with the where we try to improve water quality as well as soil health in this region working directly with the farmers and we've been in existence since 2012 and the organization has had some great success. Our farm is located in the northwestern part of the watershed with the state capitol right in the center of the Isthmus of the five lakes. Very good farmland in this area also very very very populated area as well. A vast majority of the farmers are dairy mostly in the northern part of the watershed. Southern part of the watershed is more crop land and more maybe some more to the beef and swine down in that area. Andress Berry Ridge Farms three equal partners myself my brother Steve and Randy and their families milk and 500 cows approximately 400 heifers 1100 acres of land grow off alfagrass soybeans wheat I guess we also sell genetics registered herd of cows have some hygienoma cows we've all showed all three families have showed at the local fairs in the dairy expo. So well rounded farm one of the things that we concentrate on the farm is being good stewards of the land we use a lot of cover crops we do a lot of minimum tillage. Our housing of our livestock calves up to six months are in group pens we bed with primarily corn stocks ground corn stover that corn stover is normally chopped twice before we bail it so it's not overly long and stringy it's sized and particle size you know three to four inches we do use a little bit of wood shavings with the calves heifers that are seven months and older are then introduced to free stalls and we are bedding with ground corn cobs and sawdust in those stalls and then all our lactating cows are on sand bedding. All the manure is I should say the manure is six months and younger an older manure is all the all the manure from the heifers from baby calves until they have their first calf is now being composted on the farm in one way or another uh the manure that from the heifers that are in the free stalls is hauled daily to a local what am I saying local manure digester where they harvest the methane out of it we bring back the separated fiber and that goes into the composting process we have enough liquid storage for six months for the lactating cows what is composting and this is a very basic definition and it's combining carbon and nitrogen sources together and decay the deco composition of the organic matter into a simpler form by introducing these two two sources together and by the decaying organic materials then is used for plant fertilizer it's been around for centuries why farm farm scale composting number one thing is to shrink volumes and concentrate nutrients they also kill pathogens and break down carbon the carbon bedding and you make nutrients more available to the growing crops and one of the reasons you are making it more available is by breaking down the carbon bedding which normally in some cases takes up nutrients out of the soil to break it down in the field can be an alternative way to handle manure other than liquid because the composting process uses a lot of moisture you can use you can take some higher moisture manures and introduce it to the composting process minimizing the amount of liquid storage one thing that is became very evident in our research and the work that we've done here is that it converts the soluble phosphorus in manure to a more stable particular form that binds to the carbon in the compost therefore making it a safer product to take to the field when you have runoff events it doesn't tend to move as quickly off the field manure manure composting and renotes is also an alternative way to store and stack manure utilizing your headlands and your fields actually for the storage versus a manure pit or a structure allows a wider window for applying livestock nutrients back on the field we got more ability to spread on on growing crops in the summertime a lot of times when you spread liquid manure it's a fall and and and spring application only a couple weeks to get it done compost allows us to get that nutrients out there yeah more often more days of the year than say liquid compost has a less less risk to enter groundwater because of the organic nitrogen tends not to move as easy and better avoids potential water quality issues by minimizing the risk of runoff better utilization of nutrients in the farm system this is something i learned early on is now we have all this nutrients that we have tied up out in our farm fields some are higher than others and some fields get manure more often than others in the form of liquid manure this way we can get manure out to those fields that don't for instance if they're highly erodible we can get manure to those fields more often in the form of compost therefore using the higher fertility fields of the farms to actually feed the lower fertility fields in the farm history of composting on at berry ridge farms the first time i was approached about composting was our tenant we have a hog facility that we rent out was the summer of 2000 2014 a little misprinter pvp dv was moving through the country at that time and they no longer could render mortalities so they were looking for an alternative way to dispose of their mortalities and they approached me about getting some corn stock bedding to make some windrows to embed the the mortalities into to compost them and i said i could do one thing better i could supply them with a all the bedding packed manure they wanted and therefore we started that process and i was amazed after a month's worth of time of that mortality being in that windrow health how it disappeared with very minimal smell or or attraction of flies the summer of 2015 we were awarded a serigrant and managing summer we were managing summer packed bedding packed manure strictly in the summer um we uh we received the grant to offset some costs and experiment with composting um with two other local farmers and that was to to help understand a little bit more about what we could do with the composting what were some of the alternative um well first of all could we make good compost second of all what are the what some of the things we could use the compost for one of them was potentially some livestock bedding at some point at a certain point of the of the process as well as we moved some compost off the farm to another farm that did not have a history of manure or or compost in their farming operation in 2017 we received a community grant to continue composting and to build we also built a new heifer facility and compost shed so the idea of that grant was more on the water quality side of things being involved with the aero pride and our organization and the community of this area is very concerned with the five lakes of the water quality and what comes off these farm fields mainly in the form of phosphorus we were wondering if there was a way we could potentially make compost move that nutrients to farms that need it and our our our watershed is a perfect example with the livestock being in the northern part of the watershed and very few livestock in the southern part of the watershed how could we potentially work together and move that nutrients from the farms from those livestock heavy livestock areas to areas that are not getting manure and or organic fertilizer 2018 we designed and built a compost turner with a local equipment manufacturer or I should say a fabricator welding shop that complimented our composting process and allows us to be much more efficient 2019 we worked with a number of different carbon sources in our manure we did a trial with the MMSD the medicine metropolitan sewer district with some of their class A bio solids we worked with some with grass and straw um bedding packed manure separated fiber all those types of carbon sources and we did a study as far as how how how they performed in the composting process 2020 we started working with local the local manure digester to allow us to increase composting to all our livestock which I said earlier other than the milking cows and what that really did was allowed us to get a little additional moisture out of that manure before we introduced it to the composting process and now we have all of our young stock manure is being being treated or you could say being processed through the compost system currently we continue to try other ideas that might add value to the agronomic value of compost and how it performs in the field again the serigrant we the outcomes for the idea of it was to improve the long-term sustainability of each farm through the marketing of value-added soil amendments and moving nutrients out of the phosphorus impaired watershed we did that with that trial we had one of the farms that again we hauled the finished compost to a farm in the southern part of the watershed that did not have common or history and we had seen some some results there we also we're looking at the possibilities of using it for bedding and the the trial included daily temperature carbon dioxide accumulation moisture percentages visual evaluation of the leachate and runoff in the steam generated and one of the things that we are learning with the composting out in the fields on headland stacking or field edge is there's very little leachate and and that is very important as far as worrying about contaminating ground water um it seems like the the compost when you're turning the compost regularly it actually burns up that extra moisture and the water in a lot of cases actually draws moisture out of the ground as I said we we learned in the serigrant that at a certain point in the process three or four weeks in that the compost was in a state that we thought it would actually make pretty decent bedding at that time it probably was turned four or five times had good pathogen kill and we used it in our free stalls for our heifers one of the problems we had though because we did we only scrape once a day our freestyle alleyways we had some issues with harry hoof warts with the with the heifers they're drawing a little bit too much moisture into the into the free stalls and seemed like those harry hoof warts flourished in our facility at at the end of the day it didn't work well for us as far as car cow comfort it was great I think in a situation where you had alley scrapers or slatted floor I think this could be a pretty good potential practice or at a minimum being able to mix that with another carbon sources bedding the community compost grant from 2017 to 2018 was funded and retrieved through the clean lakes alliance worked with UW Madison on the research side of things evaluate the potential runoff of p loss on farms during the manure composting process and the application to crop fields this is where we found out that there was a transition from from from soluble phosphorus to particulate phosphorus that binds to the carbon within the compost that was something that we didn't realize prior to this and and we feel is pretty beneficial for the environments again we used we also used bedding from the six months and younger the corn stocks straw some wood shavings a little bit of sand mixed in some of that as well we uh we were able to um get a little better handle on the expenses of what it was actually costing us at that time to do the composting process that I'll be sharing later the outcomes of the growing of the compost grant the summary the growing awareness of the spreading of packed manure on melting snow is not the best way to manage and use nutrients in the manure so the idea of this was could we take manure off the farm fields at particularly this time of the year when people are needing to get manure off out of the out of the pens that's thawing can we put it into a windrow and turn it into compost rather than spreading it out on the fields where it is highly um uh soluble phosphorus would potentially move with the melting snow and get into our waterways we also learned that the compost dries down saving a lot of a lot of hauling costs we're generally seeing a reduction of anywhere between 40 and 60 percent in volume we also learned that composting compost could be spread on growing crops like alfalfa hay and through our yield monitors on our chopper uh where we harvest the the hay we were able to see a little bit of a yield bump um I was looking more so to see if we'd see a yield drag if we were doing any damage so being that we seen a little bit of a yield bump and we could detect it with our our own yield monitoring I felt pretty good about that nutrients being used out on the hay fields the other concern when you put it on hay fields is you want the pathogens to be reduced you don't want to be re harvesting pathogens especially pathogens that potentially could lead to herd diseases like yonies uh again the compost uh was more flexible for land application and now we have the potential of selling off the farm are some of our excess nutrients headland stacking a convenient way to start composting um you could you could headland stack this time of the year um another way of being uh uh minima by another way to minimize the risk of nutrients leaving the field and it would just be a matter of bringing in the compost turner to aerate that that uh headland stack or that windrow on the end of the edge of the field these areas uh when we site them we're usually looking for areas that maybe are high traffic areas that don't have the yield potential um therefore you're not necessarily taking land out of production that that could be a net gain to your farm operation or your your feed needs the compost turner obviously you need to introduce that oxygen and and liquidate the waste gases to allow the composting and speedy decompensation the composting process how are we going about composting on our farm as of as of today and I guess the the main thing is uh when we compost on our farm we do do it two ways we do some of it on a controlled environment under a roof and we do some on on outside pad cement pad uh where we uh are a little bit more exposed to the elements of of uh of the weather and uh to picture to the right I got actually got a caught a bald eagle checking in on what we were doing one day uh I thought it was kind of kind of interesting uh you must have seen it from a bird's eye view and had to take a closer look so there is there is interest in composting out there and uh even this fellow was willing to check it out where can you compost um so the the uh the compost is we are doing it under a roof uh and that roof is uh um not cemented underneath it's uh three foot of clay uh base that was built for this specifically NRCS approved um and then we also do an outside composting pad uh that we um have a little bit more more material than what we can do under the roof that's where our overflow um both work well uh both have some challenges I do see a couple questions here uh well first one being uh any permits needed uh for in and nutrient management plan and um no um we we are actually allowed to do up to 4500 yards and one particular site if you do it on headland stacking based off of NRCS rules and was there any analysis done of the microbe composition of the finished compost uh we have not yet we do have some test I do have some tests of trace elements within the compost on the fertility site moving forward here's another example of where you compost some of these trials we were doing out in the fields here's a example of field edge uh wind rows that were in the field and if you look at the fields there is no in the field here in the grass growing next to the compost you're not seeing any signs of leaching or burning of the grass um that's coming out of these wind rows the types of manure that we are now putting into our compost um on the left hand side we've got the freestyle scraping so that's the the manure that we are actually taking to the digester right now um that's you can see it's got a um a little bit of a slump to it it's not straight water by no means um we can handle it with the the tractor loader bucket we can load it uh with the tractor loader we it's not pumpable so it actually works quite well for the the digester uh manure we're actually taking a fair amount of methane capability within that manure because it is a little on the thicker side that helps offset some of the cost of transportation uh to make it uh viable bedding pack manure that's our main carbon source that's where a lot of the energy is coming from to make the compost here's a picture of the separated solids notice that's that's very stackable that's the the separated um solids parts that come out of the the liquid that goes to the to the digester when we build our wind rows we are loading the different types of manure and what you're seeing here in this picture is um the the tractor or the spreader that we load this uh this um manure into is kind of a multifaceted machine for us that that same spreader is used to haul the manure the scrapings to the digester on a daily basis hauls the fiber back also builds helps us build the wind rows as well as spread the finished compost so we're this machine we're getting a lot of use out of on our farm uh very important when you add the extra steps to the composting process um so that you have that you're not adding a lot of equipment cost that's not being used the um the loader then we load the three different the two ingredients system are really only using two ingredients here now is the bedding pack manure and the separated solids after that's loaded in the spreader the mix we are using right now is three parts fiber one part uh bedding pack we then build our wind rows so you can see this we back the spreader up to the windrow open the back gate and as we spread it it makes this perfect pyramid uh this this this uh that is uh basically what we want to make uh a good compost windrow or or to start the composting process uh we get a good mix of these two materials uh early on we're we don't have to turn it to get this mix uh usually we are building a windrow a week we are finishing a windrow a week uh based on the amount of manure we have and um so this this windrow will sit for about a week before it gets actually turned with the compost turner once we start the compost turning uh process uh we'll turn uh usually weekly we will hit that sweet sweet spot of uh when we're got good temperatures we'll turn five times in the matter of uh two weeks process to maintain that 135 degree temperature at all times here's a site of the finished compost we've got compost outside here you can notice the strength this the color the size of the reduction obviously in volume and then under the shed roof here the compost building the windrow furthest to the right is the one that's the closest to finish and the other two are um you know got a couple weeks to go yet transportation and staging of the compost so um our farm we we have land that varies uh from two miles to 10 miles from the home farm so we have to transport some of this compost some a fair distance and when we do it we try to load it as efficiently and haul it as efficiently as possible haul it to the field that's going to get spread on so when we get into that field to spread it that we're not wasting any time that we're basically loading and spreading and uh making full um uh uh efficiency of both the loader and the spreader when we go into the spreading process but here on the right hand side you can see what a windrow looks like in the field um this time of the year scraped away the snow um so we can put it on basically on top of the dirt and in our situation we don't take it to uh to a finished compost date like you'd put in a bag so it will heat a little bit yet out in the field and I guess you could say it can condition it or or just do the last finishing in the field and then the spreading uh here you see the same machine um we put spinners into the under the back of the spreader um able to spread up to about 80 feet uh real consistently with the spreader and this picture shows us spreading it on uh grassy hayfield and uh the biggest thing that I've noticed when we're spreading compost is that you don't paint the ground like you do with when you're typically hauling uh manure with like a slinger spreader or um or a box spreader it just you don't have the you don't have the volume to do that but yet you're getting probably as much nutrients if not more onto the field and being a lot less visible visible uh for the buy span the public as well any questions here or some questions to catch up on okay how do your costs compare to the traditional soil management so one of what we're finding is here is that we're actually uh we're going to get into it a little bit later but uh our nutrients um I can haul compost to the field much further than I can liquid manure and to get the value out of it so uh for instance a load of compost on a straight truck could probably worth about 600 bucks in fertilizer value the same payload and liquid might be about 65 to 80 dollars a load so therefore I can haul that nutrients further before the value of that of that nutrients is gone um we also are seeing reduction in the amount of fertilizer we have to put on to the purchase and put on to fields because we are you better utilizing the nutrients within the farm system um the challenge is with winter composting is moisture um and that's one of the questions here as well and we tend to to uh in our our setup here is we try to go in with drier carbon sources to begin with if if possible um our compost generally runs higher in moisture in the winter months um there are some uh opportunities out there to put aeration under the windrows if you want to spend the money uh we turn more often in the winter uh we uh we also try to do it in a way that um the moisture leaves the pile so I don't like to turn on days where where it's cold real cold if we don't have to uh just so that moisture gets away from the pile the NPK analysis of the finished compost I'm going to share that a little bit later we have variation we have some carbon nitrogen ratios that I'll be sharing later as and as well so the now the economics this is probably this is something that's really important to understand and we we performed some economics early on with the community composting grant I went through this winter and I'm kind of updated that to what we're able to be how those economics are working for our farm right now um now that we've ramped up our our production so if you look at the cost analysis of traditional manure handling we have here we have a chart or a cost breakdown in a couple different categories I'm going to start with the top one here so in this cost analysis we've actually took the value of the of the bedding stock or the bedding that was going into the manure and the amount of bales and so forth and in this case it showed it was 504 uh dollars in value that's probably going up a little bit uh um this particular cost analysis was done on basically 467 cubic yards of bedding pack manure coming out of the facility we go down to the actual costs of scraping and cleaning the barn and the labor and then we look at the total cost of the manure so the total cost to clean out that barn and build the windrows in this situation uh or we're just cleaning the barn I should say in this cost scenario and hauling it directly to the field so the total cost was over $3,000 but the cost per yard was $6.51 so that's what it would typically cost to in our if we would be hauling this cleaning this barn and hauling it directly to the field and that's more of the typical way of of handling bedding pack manure if we add the compost process to it you know we're gonna we've got the turning expense we have the we should actually have the facility cost so um and then we have the cost of the turner and the top box here uh loading the compost at the barn again to move it further out reloading the compost on the Tevi spreader for spreading um um that's what we figured the cost there total cost the total cost is produce haul and spread the compost was like $4,877 you'll notice on the page before it was right around $3,000 just to haul it directly to the field if we take that on a on a on a per cubic yard uh price to spread the compost to the field at that time we were estimating it was costing $21.77 per cubic uh yard to uh to haul or to make and haul that compost on the field if we were to load that compost and not take it to the field and just sell it we were figuring the cost net cost of production would be about $18.97 so $18.97 if we convert that to a per ton cost uh because most of our analysis are done on a per ton about uh basis for when you send your compost off to get an analysis on it comes back the nitrogen the phosphorus and the potassium are tabulated as a per ton basis um being that a yard of compost doesn't weigh a ton it comes out to $32.31 per ton spread on the field under this scenario if we were to just uh sell it uh and put it on a truck it would be 29.18 a ton uh for those costs so those those costs have to be made up somewhere so the compost uh comparison direct haul to the field versus finishing compost we are seeing about $6 right now $6.50 a yard to convert them in or into compost or $10 a ton for the finished compost more it's costing $10 more a ton to do it if rather than just haul it directly to the field now some cost analysis based off of where we are today now now as of now as you the shed the interest appreciation and principle i figured i based this all on a per yard basis i figured it was 244 uh building the compost windrow that would be um as i showed you in the pictures earlier the loading of the manure the different ingredients onto the spreader and running it back out uh i figured it's about $2 per yard turning the compost eight times uh $2.50 per yard loading the finished compost for field spreading or sale uh we have we're a little more efficient with that now we got a bigger loader $1.50 per yard so our totals as of what we're making now is about $8.44 per yard to make it into compost just to make the compost and load it the cost of spreading the compost we figure up to two miles which is $3.80 per yard so therefore we've got it delivered and spread to the field for $12.24 a yard or $18.83 per per finished ton cost analysis then versus now we're looking at 32 tons uh $32.31 a ton spread on the field versus the $18.44 per ton for now so here we're here we are looking at a value uh of the compost that's both the questionnaire what are the nps and ks uh in this situation this uh this was done in 2016 um on a per ton basis on this particular analysis we figured the value of the nitrogen uh was $12.87 per ton the phosphorus was $6.92 per ton the potassium was $7.99 per ton the sulfur was $1.51 a ton calcium was 505 per ton magnesium was 350 per ton and then if you take all the others less significant numbers for analysis but still important to the crop the boron the zinc the copper the magnesium the molybdenum um this the total value of that compost comes up to $4179 per ton so there's still some extra value above and beyond the production uh for that that particular compost there is a difference in compost um now here we've been playing around with different feedstocks going into the compost some are create higher compost numbers than others moisture has a lot to do with it uh if you look at the upper left hand column here we've got a compost sample that runs 69 percent moisture that's a little on the high side you're looking at the nitrogen at 9 uh 9.39 per ton uh total phosphorus at 8.54 a ton potassium 9.94 and sulfur 1.79 you take the sample in the lower right hand corner now this is 41 percent moisture considerably drier all of a sudden with the feedstock in this particular case we've got nitrogen at 31.81 we got phosphorus at 28.46 and potassium at 56.16 and sulfur at 783 um there's a couple things that could play into this the carbon to nitrogen ratio uh obviously the moisture is number one the carbon to nitrogen ratio of the first sample was 14 to 1 the carbon to nitrogen ratio of the second sample is 11 to 1 so the one in the lower right is more finished and drier the feedstock going into it might have been higher in NP and K to begin with as well so that's why now in our um recipe we've kind of got it zeroed in to just that three three to one ratio then we uh we got a more consistent product coming out um that also has been made better because we are making our windrows with the with the spreader uh versus a loader tractor we have a much better job of having a consistent windrow from end to end we don't have that inconsistency of maybe we have a hot spot in in the middle of the windrow where it got a little bit more of this uh higher higher uh uh fertility feedstock to begin with and all of a sudden we've pulled a sample out of out of that area so we're more we're more consistent now than than we were previous compost analysis is by the season so what this is is what is how are our compost uh testing by the season the one on the left I think does that break down to him um you have the average moisture the actual highest so this is a series of samples we sample every windrow so we took the high windrow and the low windrow and then we have an average so we've you got the moisture content you know the average is 56 uh organic matter 24 pH 9.5 our pHs seem to run a little bit higher even on the real finish compost and then you can see the averages for the NP and K and then at the bottom you can see how the nitrogen and ammonium and the organic N and so forth and the carbon and nitrogen ratio spring now the spring compost would be the compost that would be being made right now in the months of January and February the summer compost would be basically the compost that's being made in early spring and then the fall compost would be the compost that's being made in the summer and the winter compost would be what is being started in the fall if you look at the summer compost the moisture goes down six percent we have a little bit higher numbers as far as the potassium nitrogen is down this particular case the phosphorus is is a little bit lower but then that spring compost we had an we had a ingredient in that high one that really pushed the phosphorus so that one's a little a little out of whack there so again then on the bottom in this particular case we didn't have as much of a breakdown on the organic N but the total carbon or the carbon nitrogen ratio was 13.26 for an average we take the fall now here here's that that material that's being made in the summer notice it's drier on an average we had a high of 56 and a low of 38 if you look at those numbers we have a variation there pH again is still still up there nitrogen on the high one was pretty high the phosphorus is is relatively high on the high one as well but if we can duplicate that in a mix now we got something that we can justify hauling even further out than than your standard compost so there are ways to to spice this compost up a little bit to have a little more value in it based on the feedstock that's going in it and how we treat it again on the bottom carbon and nitrogen ratio on these we're averaging 11.47 now winter there's the moisture there's our big that's my biggest challenge is the winter compost is dealing with the moisture and not having that pile go stagnant on us and 68 is getting up there I always kind of fall on the rule of thumb that making compost is like making silage if it's too wet it doesn't work well in the ration if it's too dry it doesn't work well in the ration so if you can keep it somewhere between 55 and 65 you've got a really good working range here you can see the averages on that you know our high had a had a carbon to nitrogen ratio at the bottom of 16.36 that's probably not finished real well that was 72 percent moisture that's probably why uh the one that was 61 and a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 11.2 that's more acceptable and uh you know the average was 13.83 now that was a lot of stuff do we have any questions on that okay okay so are the carbon to nitrogen nitrogen ratios from start a start or end of the compost process so carbon to nitrogen ratios on ours are usually start around that 30 30 to 1 when it's fresh made in the winter we always kind of figure the way we're using it out in the field not necessarily selling it as class A compost anytime it's below 15 to 1 I feel it's time to move it out we're getting the value of the the pathogen kill at that point we have a pretty good carbon number there the shrink is there and we just I just don't want to put any more time and money into it than I absolutely have to if I was to sell the compost we would probably then have to spend a little more time with it the ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio is from what I understand is anywhere 15 and lower it's very hard to get carbon to nitrogen ratios under 10 so when she's getting down to that 11 range you've got a pretty good finished compost that's when it's really black and color the textures is particle size is real small it's got that real earthy smell those are what that's to me is some of the best based on the visual and the smell can you explain about the compost turner I would like to know what model you use to have it custom built so our compost turner that we built it is it does a complete turn of the of the compost it we back into the compost it's there's a beater that flings it up in the air and onto a conveyor belt that restacks it and this this turner I can't talk too much about it I'm I'm in the process of potentially patenting this turner but it's been working quite well for us and I think part of the reason we're able to do some of the things we're doing in a timely fashion is because of the turner itself the question here is I don't see any line in your cost analysis for the cost of not turning soluble N and P into the insoluble or into other words taking organic N and P and turning it into organic therefore making it insoluble until root it statutes call for it real value yeah and that one that's true but how do you come up with that number that's one of some of the things that we still have to that I don't quite understand yet maybe some of the people that are listening in maybe have some answers because there are definitely some hidden values there that we do not label in our numbers the question here is I came in late what do you see as a carbon what what do you oh what do you use as a carbon source to manage your carbon and nitrogen racial our main carbon source in our in our compost here is corn stocks um actually bedding pack manure taken right out of the out of the out of the barn in with either straw or or corn stocks has the almost the perfect nitrogen carbon and nitrogen racial to start the composting process all right caught up on the questions yeah we're gonna move on to the next section we got another one what equipment used to measure the temperature for legal compost I am just taking temperatures at this point right now we'll probably have to invest into some more sophisticated equipment if we are actually going to start marketing compost but I'm pretty much falling back on temperatures and watching temperatures to make sure we're turning in a timely fashion and then when temperatures tend to drop and the carbon and nitrogen racial goes down that's what we're basing our our time to move it out or finish turning conclusion that's what I was saying composting unknown value and here's a list of things that we don't know and I have a hard time putting a handle on what is the value of adding compost to the soil for soil health purposes so we know by taking compost to the southern part of the watershed back in 2015 and 16 the farmer applied four ton to the to the acre at that time a one time application that for from that point the following year it's moving forward up until this year even he's seen a yield bump in the area within the field where he spread the compost um in soybeans and corn both were you know pushing close to 10 bushels to the acre at the high he was still seeing a couple bushels this year so there's something going on in the soil there by introducing compost and it's not just the the the np and k that carbon and organic matter and the biology of that compost is doing something significant and I am open to anybody that has any more information on that that could share with us and then it's definitely something we'll be working on here closely with trials to come to see if we can actually figure out what's happening what is the value of the additional carbon from the compost added back to the soil when you spread it how do we put a number on that value and what is the value of the organic makeup of the compost when compared to conventional fertilizer um obviously this farmer was using conventional fertilizer he was getting good yields we introduced the compost to it and within a year's time he had even better yields so there's definitely something going on there better utilization of nutrients in the farm system I talked about that earlier how do we how do we utilize best utilize the nutrients that we have paid for on the farm and sharing it from field to field uh convenience of the value of moving and staging manure to farm fields before hauling this time of the year we don't I shouldn't say we don't have a lot to do but we have we have a little more time to actually stage that manure get it to those fields taking the transportation part out of the equation at the time when you need to be out there spreading the ability to manage bedding pack manure all months of the year that was a challenge for us you know when you have bedding packed barns that need to be cleaned out in the summer months if you're limited on fields where you can spread it you can't spread it on hay fields you'll smother out the alfalfa or the grass you take the potential of re harvesting it again therefore composting and breaking it down allows us to do that select days for haulings that are best for the field conditions there's a value there uh you're not out there compacting the soil uh you can pick your dry days or or days when the the weather is is better for spreading manure or nutrients out on the field spreading manure compost on fields that won't have received manure there are fields on our farm like because of the landscape that we cannot put liquid manure on uh it just it's too hard uh we do most of our liquid manure application in the form of drag lines you get on some of these steep fields and it's hard to pull a hose on a steep field uh with their high slopes it makes some challenges problems with potential of kinking hoses and things like that allows for a redistribution of nutrients within the farm system to all fields as i talked about cons of composting costs costs more to compost you know even though it's come only doesn't look significant but six dollars and fifty cents a yard or ten dollars a ton doesn't seem all that big but if you put four ton to the acre on all of a sudden you're looking at forty dollars an acre more uh to to put that nutrients out in that field that same nutrients granted it's in a different form probably more usable those are the types of things that we have to be able to offset the expenses of the production uh some way somehow to justify the extra time and the commitment uh uh uh for for the composting process time time commitment is is big it takes time to to uh stage this manure takes time to make the winterless takes time to turn the manure um some farms don't have that time that labor force some do the nice thing about the turner that we are working with here on our farm is it's completely mobile some of our trials we're doing working with with farmers we were as far as five miles away we're able to move that turner with the tractor a minimal amount of time to turn their win rows so there's a potential that that compost turning and making could be um could be a custom uh custom application or a custom customly done by somebody that wants to move from farm to farm um if it picks up in in popularity equipment and facility costs um the equipment isn't cheap the spreader isn't cheap the turner isn't cheap uh we have we we have uh most of our manure manure is being composted under the the roof the more of a controlled environment I believe it's that's well worth it the consistency of the product coming out uh saves in time potentially if you have a a win row that goes um dormant on you halfway through the process being outside if you get a heavy rain or something then you you got to either introduce more carbon to it or you have to wait it out to get revitalize that compost win row so it takes a little bit of that risk away with the facility cost a lack of equipment and availability um when I started looking for compost turners that would work well in our in our shed that's what brought me to the idea of building a compost turner I think uh we we the the equipment that is needed at a farm level is uh is is maybe not there yet or maybe it's coming seems like most of the compost turners that were out there were either too big for what we wanted or or too small weather challenges in this region northern you know we're we're in the southern part of Wisconsin we have some cold weather in January and February as we well recognize here coming out of the the cool weather we had here recently those challenges add that adds a challenge to the compost uh process especially when you're in the deep freeze I don't like the turn if I don't have to in those those uh temperatures because it seems to thin out my my uh bug counter my bacteria count the good bacteria I also am turning frost and moisture back into the winter that normally would be volatized up in the air ability to dissipate the moisture into the compost in the winter months just talked about that getting that moisture to actually leave that winter roll if we're going to do this in a large scale we may have to introduce some form of ventilation or air in the floor systems to potentially drive that moisture away from the windrows at this time of the year what we have learned we have learned that that we have the ability to make a high quality compost product you know we've we've got some compost that's very high value depending upon the feedstocks that's a matter of zeroing in on your recipes and your your sources to to make a consistent product uh compost process works well if you have raw products and multiple types of manure we are we have proven that we've even taken it one step further as I've talked to you earlier about with some of the Class A product coming out of the Madison Metropolitan sewer district can shrink manure volume considerably by composting as we've seen anywhere from 40 to 60 in volume reductions that's huge when you gotta offset the costs of the extra time and investment to make compost can make nutrients much more available and stable for composting with composting versus conventional packed manure I think we've seen that in our what we've seen out in the field with our yields we we definitely know that if you haul a lot of straw and and corn stock carbon base fresh manure out in the field that it can sometimes suppress the the yield or or potential of that crop that year just because of the tying up the nutrients that's in the soil by break that break down the carbon in that manure we can spread product on growing crops of alfalfa grass we even did some on soybeans last year for a farmer that's that's a positive can transport nutrients further in the form of compost before the economic value of the product becomes a net loss can manage process manure on field edges it's perfectly legal to do that it's a good way of saving some time and at the hauling time we can dispose of livestock mortalities I started out my presentation and that's where we learned what composting was a haul about so to speak was working with with the mortalities and how it shrinks how you're able to decompose that that mortality and that that winter of of manure and and and shrink shrink that manure at the same time pretty safe and efficient way to limit yourself to exposure to other diseases and pathogens with the with the rendering truck coming onto the farm can reintroduce carbon back to the farm fields in the form of compost that's that's a given can mix other things with compost you know we can we can potentially add lime wall board the municipal mixes that that is important that spreader that I I have here and it showed you on the screen has the potential of spreading lime you could mix lime with your compost on a field that you wanted to seed into alfalfa and and spread the lime and the compost at the same time a lot of wall board down in this area with the amount of housing and building in this region the southern part of the state has a lot of gypsin in it some value in that in our watershed here the municipal municipality sewer districts they're they're they've got a challenge they they're actually competing with farmers for land to spread the human waste on there might be a potential to co-mingle our products to make a product that works for for the farmers and and work together could that's a possibility may not fit the organic world but it might fit the conventional systems convert soluble phosphorus from raw manure into more stable particulate form through the composting process we've we've seen that in our work with the with the university and in the community grant what we need to learn how to finish compost interact with the soil I guess that's something that I would really like to get into more depth now and understand what's happening in those farm fields when we put that compost out there can compost be another sale will come out early coming off the farm and off our waste stream so if if we if we can and I and my I have a enough experience with this now that I feel that it can be I think it I think that would be very very important for the future of the livestock industry if we can somehow make a product coming off of their waste stream that could form another form of income with there's farms out there that need that organic fertilizer and they need those nutrients so how much compost do we need to put on per acre to to get the benefits of the that you need in the soil that kick so to speak they get that kick is it four tons is it maybe a thousand pounds if it's a thousand pounds I've got all kinds of compost that I can share with people if I need to continue putting four to five ton on my hay fields then maybe maybe I don't we can pull resources to engage a larger number of farmers I mean can we do this I'm starting to think we can it's just a matter of how does that all work and how can we work together to do that how much compost is need to apply to apply to obtain maximum soil health benefits just touched on that a little bit early but what is that what is that magic number how much compost do we need to apply per acre to get the full value of compost working in the soil can the rest be marketed and that's that's the bottom line why management or by composting any size farm can successfully compost that's that's been proven better utilization of nutrients in the farm system I've talked about that a number of times mobilization of nutrients needed in specific fields you know when I do my own snap plus or nutrient management planning and I got a pretty good handle on fields that are low on phosphorus and need phosphorus I try to build those fields within the system with the phosphorus that's in the compost get the nutrients to the fields that are highly erodible tend to be the hardest ones to get the manure spreader to or the drag line to some of them fields aren't getting corn that is often so it's hard to hit them on a regular basis liquid manure storage costly to store hauling it comes because of the volume no no secret in that I mean manure structures are costing more and more year every year that goes by to build and how can we shrink that again to shrink that volume of manure so that when we put wheels under it that it's more concentrated and and more condensed so that we can move it move it out more efficiently and further allowed to headland stack and stage compost on fields in winter months when liquid manure can't be spread those headlands don't cost you much more than the taxes in the winter months for them to be sitting there on the farm field might as well make use of them some of these field edge you know tree line areas they're not growing the best crops to begin with maybe we should be utilizing them for staging our nutrients out there earlier pathogen removal another one how do we put a value on that but but that is the reason I that we should be composting kills kills a number of pathogens allows for spreading on growing crops and then reduces that potential for these disease spreading example would be like yonies our herd is pretty well eradicated yonies and we've been able to do it with good management practices and I guess we're at the point here where we can field a few more questions and you maybe even have some dialogue so so the first question in other words what is the benefit or not containing the groundwater and surface waters with P and N would you not agree that it is priceless yeah I agree it's it is uh but even though it's priceless somebody has to pay for and there's a cost to it so um you know my fire this is there is no doubt about it I am spending more money on our farm making compost right now than if I was directly hauling that material to the field and so to ask other farmers to do the same thing we really got to know the benefits and the values of those things so we can justify making the change and the things that lead to better soil health and better utilization of nitrogen and and the nutrients within the compost all those things are win-wins I always call them the win-wins and when you win for the environment and you win for the farmer's bottom line those are easy to adopt and adapt to but the ones that that are just flat costs to the farm them are harder to sell would not an easy justification for added costs be the simple fact that 70% of your non-composted nitrogen from the manure is leaching to the groundwater only 30% plant utilization 100% of nitrogen in your compost is being utilized by the plant huge I would agree being able to have that in an organic form slow release and tying it up I think is big those are things those are the messages that need to be told with this what is the width length and height of your wind rolls our wind rolls generally start out at about six to seven feet high the width at the bottom is about 12 feet generally when they're done more more on the finish side they shrink down to about three feet and in some cases we actually combine wind rolls to keep to keep the composting process going a little longer is there any thought to compost some or slash all the milk and cow manure the challenge that I would have with the milk and cow manure is is the excess water that's in the liquid manure from a dairy cow dairy cow drinks a lot of water so she's she's putting out a lot of a lot of moisture in her manure there are some facilities in Europe before they're where they are taking a liquid manure and and high volumes of water in it and are composting it I'm not up to speed on them I don't know that particularly the answer but I know the more things that I have to build and add to the farm the more costs that's going to be for for for doing it so if we can do it someday I'm sure we will it's a work in our case it's a working progress what effect does your composting process have on greenhouse gas emissions that's a good question so there's no lie there we're we're emitting some greenhouse grasses through gases through the composting process now there is the potential of adding some some things to the compost that could alleviate some of that I'm going to be working with some people moving forward on that idea I can't reveal what the product is yet but we are going to be testing that so anytime we can keep some nighter excess nitrogen into that compost that should help with the validation of greenhouse gases what is the size of your building and how many yards and tons can it handle so our building is 65 for 60 by 220 I have four windrows in there at a time I always figure a windrow per foot approximately a ton a ton half a third of a ton per foot the building is actually quite high it's I think it's 16 or 17 feet to the truss height that gives us plenty of room to use the spreader open the end gate in there and not hit the bottom of the trusses