 Just smell of that stuff, you know. It's alive. It's not dead. I just enjoy watching Mother Nature working. I mean, it's intriguing. I mean, if you've never been around doing composting and then you see it change on a daily basis as you turn it, it's impressive. Most people say, well, that can't be that. Did this. It is. We've been farming roughly around 1,500 acres. Of last year was probably the most diverse that we've ever been. And having we had rye, we had peas, we had sunflowers, edible beans, soybeans, alfalfa, and wheat. So from a few years ago, we were just basically doing soybeans and wheat. And so we have gone to more of a diverse farming operation, which I think is helpful in management or to try to get your biology going. This is our feedlot facility, which we call Hollywood Feeders here in Toronto, South Dakota. And we're a permitted facility for 34.99 head of beef cattle. So in a standard monosloop type barn, the livestock are bedded with straw. And then that combines with their manure. And you have a bed pack situation. Olsen Custom Farms, we farm about 12,000 acres in Minnesota and South Dakota. So Duel County, Lincoln County, Minnesota, and a little bit over in Hamlin County, South Dakota as well. Right now we farm, we're right around 2,200 acres. Soybeans, corn, sugar beets, and we do have wheat. We don't have any wheat this year. We'll chop some of the corn for silage, but we tend to feed a lot of the beet pulp from the factory. But it's nice, again, to fit in with spreading the manure. If we're chopping silage, we know we can spread some manure and compost. So that works out really well. So with the feedlot, we're allowed 999 through the state. We normally run about, oh, there's probably 500 that we feed in there, almost all finishing. So the feedlot processes is I'll go in about every, well, right around this time, every year with the excavator and pile our piles, pile our piles where we put our bedding, I'll pile as high as it'll go. And then we have our sloped feedlot that goes into lagoons. So all that leachate runs into lagoon. The manure starts to dry out. And then after a while, normally it's mid-August, we'll start to haul that manure out. We try to do it in about two, two and a half days. That's our goal, anyway. So we tend to, we'll hire a contractor to come in with one of those big trucks to haul. And then I just load them with the excavator, which works really well. Normally we have about, per year, we have about probably 4,000 tons of manure. But like this year, it's a double year. We really had a wet year last year, so we're trying to figure out what we're going to do there. We try to plan our acres based on the crop that we're going to go into. I like to go into corn, but we have in the past done it where we'll spread on ground that's going into sugar beets. Because normally that's sometimes weak ground, so we know we're going to get it spread. We can spread lime, we can spread manure. So we've done that the last couple of years. Like I said before, not all of it gets turned to compost of the feedlot manure that we take out. But the stuff that we do, I'll either put close to the farm and run my windows there, or in the past, I have gone on the edge of a field, dump the manure, and then just turned it four or five times. And then it's right there. We're able to spread it on the ground. So as far as spreading, we've done a little bit of both. We've had custom guys come in and spread our compost and our manure. But the last few years, we've bought our own vertical spreader. And so we've been able to spread with that and then have another neighbor that brings his over. But we've got a lot of material now, so I think we'll probably end up doing something just to get rid of it all. We should be able to spread probably 500 of those acres, I would imagine, this year. It's kind of my goal. That's how much we have a lot of material. Normally, I'd only like to put on about five ton, but with the material we have, it might be closer to 10, maybe 15, I'll end up doing trials with that too, just to see the difference. But with the compost, I'd like to spread a little, being that I have enough of the product, I'd really like to see what more, a higher amount does to kind of maybe offset some of that fertilizer side of it. That's one thing I really want to learn though too, is can I move forward using a lot less fertilizer? Because it's hard to move away, as I said before, from the NPK mindset. But I know, especially the P and the K, I know I can replace that with the compost through time. I live here on five acres in Eastern Wright County with my family, who is now just two of us, because all the other, all the kids are gone now. But we still have four horses. We've got the two you can see in the background, two big boys, and we've got two little boys out in back. Clean stalls every evening before everybody comes in from being out here on the pasture or out in the dry lot. Manure goes in a wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrow comes out here, and we just dump it here in front of the pile. And maybe once a week or so, kind of depends on how much manure we've had. I'll take the tractor and we'll load it back up on another pile and stir the pile at the same time. The reason I started first of all, is I'm concerned about, first of all, organic matter. And second, more so infiltration. I think we have a real problem with infiltration. And how do you remedy that? And I still don't have an answer for that. The other thing is that we've been loosing organic matter in our soil. And we put in, most people feel we put all this residue into the ground. It's gotta go into organic matter, but most of it goes up into the air. I went to Acre's Conference and there was a guy there that, he showed the extract, and he showed it up on the screen and he see all those critters moving around. And it says, you know, those are live in our soil. And I think we need to get them back in there again. The fertility's here. This is one of our business entities of the farm, but it was very underutilized. And it just was begging for the opportunity because it's the best fertility we could have for the farm. But how are we gonna get it out onto the Acre's? When I joined the farm as the agronomist, I quickly identified in fall of 2016 that we could do a better job with this fertility and make it kind of the hub of our fertility program. But the only way we were gonna be able to do that was to get it in a transportable package, so to speak, and that's where you fall back on the idea of composting. Diversification is important. Utilizing the Acres that you have, soil health, all those buzzwords compost is at the peak of that. Yeah, it's been 15 years since I've started to do this and every year is a new experience, but I really enjoy doing it and I enjoy talking about it and I just think it's, I like to use the term it's the right thing to do and it's also, I think it's the way things are going. I think it's, we're taking that management, that stewardship to the next level and we're taking a waste product that people don't wanna look at. They think it smells, they think it looks bad and we're turning it into something that you could give your kids and it could eat it and it wouldn't harm them. That's an amazing thing to me, so for me personally, I think the combination is really a really good way to go and I think from a sector side, from an agriculture sector side, we're gonna have to start moving away from the synthetic fertilizers from relying on that and if we're about building our soil health, it's putting that organic matter back on the soil. Every spring I spread it out on the pasture, give the grass some nutrition and we use it for garden mulch and it reduces the volume of the manure, probably by a third. It's a very inexpensive thing to do. You do have to have equipment to keep the compost pile turned over. I would hate to have to do this with a shovel, that's for sure. It would be a better operation here if I had started this on a concrete slab because one of the problems is over that over, well we've been here for 25 years and the ground around the manure pile is starting to go down just because it gets caught up in the bucket of the tractor once in a while when we turn the pile over. The manure pile itself is a composted, stays at a fairly high temperature but it'll only do that if you keep it turned over and keep it aerated and give the bacteria some oxygen to live on. Good farming, you need a mix of the fungal and bacteria and that's why I've done more of the static that I will introduce the static in with the regular compost because most of our compost, I can show you those numbers, but most of the compost that we build in the row like this gets too hot and the fungal material doesn't survive. And I'm hoping that once that these piles are probably getting cool enough now that we can do the fungal material, add that to the compost. This is some finished compost. And here, so this is what this came from and most people have a hard time visualizing, well this is soil. I mean, but it's compost that's gone through the process of with all the microbes and everything else and digesting it and this is the final result of that and which is very impressive stuff. I use straw, I've used pea straw, I've used soybean straw, I've used corn straw and we also try to get wood chips if we possibly can. This is the first time we've been using a larger amount of hay because we had some of our alfalfa that was left over from last year, we're using that and we have, in the mix that we're doing right now, it'll be 30 bales of straw on a roll with 15 bales of alfalfa. This is last year's alfalfa. So this is a really good nitrogen source to add then with your, cause what kind of straw is this then? It's rice straw. From the seat of the pants. Yeah. It's basically what you've got available. Yes. Normally green chop are road ditches as another forage area. So that would be another nitrogen source. That's right. The second time through you put water on your, probably a few times before you put the manure on top of it, it'll get a nice even windrow. And so do you think you'd be able to compost here without water? No, I think water is important because this stuff is so dry when you start with. So we will probably dump like three semi loads of manure into this here, which would be 150,000 pounds. And is that manure coming out? Is that a bedded pack? Bed back, bed back. And that'll have some hay and straw also in there too, but it should make a pretty hot mixture I would think. And usually don't have any problem with temperature. You said that pile over there was even up to 120 already. Well, when that got turned with that moisture in there now, that'll probably by tonight or tomorrow morning it'll be up to 140, 150 degrees. And that's where your biology starts working on there and breaking down everything in there. So that'll be a good material for the soil. When your compost gets down to ambient temperature, you can use it. Or another method is I think if you put it into a Ziploc bag, and if it doesn't smell ammonia, you're okay to spread it. You notice that this is ideal place. It's, you've got a slope on it. So anybody that you can't have it in a slew hole, I mean, you've got to be able to access your, or do your turning, even though you've had rain. So that's, this here has got a nice gentle slope and it heads off over to the side. We've got the analysis of both the regular windrow composting and also the static compost from the same material coming back. So if we have 12,000 acres, we hope to apply compost to 4,000 every year. So every field will see compost hopefully once in, every three years. Some people work under their state regulations. Others work under an EPA permit. But with this facility, it's easier to work under the state regulations versus an EPA permit. This particular county, you had to get a special use permit. And of course, the neighbor's concern was, oh, you're gonna have more flies, more smell, because now you've brought it out on one particular site and not land applied it. But with the inoculants and the composting process, within one or two turns, it's not manure anymore. It's compost and it's basically odor-free. And then we'll have two pads where all the windrows are contained so we can hold 36 windrows that are 14 feet by 160 feet long. And they're 160 feet because that's the length of our felt covers that we'll have over the windrows. The felt covers are for moisture management because in the composting process, the microbes wanna stay at a consistent temperature and moisture. And so excess moisture messes up that process and the windrows getting too dry would also shut that process down. So if we have them all covered, we control the moisture with the compost turner and the water cart that follows we control and rain, snow, whatever, doesn't interfere with that. Or like this summer, we have a lot of hot, windy days, you would have to be adding water to your windrows like constantly. The longer you have a run, the harder it is to get water away from the windrows, even on a design pad. So we shorten them up to 160s so there'll be a diversion channel kind of right in this area where the first runs water collects and gets diverted to the containment pond. So within this site, all the water from a rain event, excess water goes to the containment pond down there. We didn't have a lot of slope to work with here. So we have to kind of create the necessary slope because most compost sites, you have to be able to work all the time and so it can't be a place where water accumulates. It has to drain away because excess moisture doesn't lend itself while the composting. And that's why we discovered too that most large-scale composting sites tend to be in more arid areas. But over here, where you have more moisture, you have to create that condition where you can work with your compost on an almost daily basis because the windrows will demand that. This will be our loadout spot that we're standing on here to bring in trucks and we'll haul it to the field. We're thinking with a live bottom truck and then we'll meet the compost or litter spreader out in the field and that'll have a conveyor so we can just back up with a live bottom so we don't need another payloader. We don't want a double handle in the field that we're spreading. We want that to be efficient. The equipment to compost really in the scope of what farm equipment costs isn't the obstacle because there's a scale of composting equipment for every size operator. It comes down to the site and how extensive a site do you need? We probably wouldn't be able to permit this facility had we not taken on this type of manure management system they would have had to redesign something within the barns or how the manures handle because under the new South Dakota permitting you can't store manure for very long outside the barn if at all depending on what your situation is. Out here with the feedlot when my father-in-law built the feedlot it was kind of nice because he had to come under the guidelines of the feedlot runoff and so in dealing with the manure we had a best management practice plan and then with the composting it fit really well into that and we were able to utilize a lot more of that product on a wider acre basis. As you can see out here the beets have been the biggest challenge. Most of the time you're dealing with either a carbon source or a nitrogen source and what I've found is it almost goes from a carbon to a nitrogen back and forth depending on how the beets feel. I mean, they start off really spongy but then as they dry out they get really hard basically like a carbon source and so finding that happy medium of what to do with the beets has been, I won't say tough because it really isn't tough it's interesting and I like the interesting side of compost too so what I've found with this and again that's one of the main reasons I bought my Turner is if a guy could start off with a smaller particle size you would be way better off with my machine after two times it really breaks that stuff down. The ingredient part is the main thing. I have found with our manure we use straw throughout the year so we tend to have a pretty good mixture based on just the straw that we put in with the manure in the feedlot. I don't have to add a lot. With the beets like I say the moisture level can vary so much that it's more of a feel and a look for me so I don't really have a recipe at this point. Again, there's a few things I try to do to start that process a little quicker but over time it starts to heat up even without turning it and then getting that particle size down is kind of the main thing so talking about mistakes and I made a lot of mistakes is the carbon side of it. I've really come to find out and my dad has too that the manure is good but you can have too much of it. You know what I mean? And if you're going for a good product you don't need a whole lot of manure. I consider the manure to be kind of a magic elixir but you can get in trouble with it heating up too much as far as when you apply it, especially repeat customers because they think a little is good, a lot must be better so I've really tried to go away from just doing straight manure piles out of the field. We still do it but if I'm going for a good product I'll basically start with my carbon source and then add the manure. Here it's almost trying to keep the moisture out of it. I deal more with puddling which creates a challenge even with the equipment. Sometimes a two-wheel drive tractor is not enough to even pull sometimes which is kind of frustrating but the heavier ground out here poses a challenge but I've been able to get around that and now that's where Hankinson comes into play. I've got some compost ground down by Hankinson North Dakota where it's basically blow sand and it can be raining and I can be turning so I love making compost down there and it makes a really good product too. Well here it was just the closeness to the feedlot. I didn't want to have to haul it very far and we had a spot that was close enough that had a good enough drainage site that worked and I try to move my piles around so I'm not putting it on the same spot but I also don't want to take up a lot of ground but I've also done where we'll pile manure on the end of a field, I'll turn it and then we spread it right away which really works nice and that's a year process. The trucking cost is always something that I really take into account because it can get expensive but it's no different than if you're having to haul manure I try to take into account that and with the compost you're hauling a lot less material too. The marketing side of it of course I want to get to the point where I can market almost all of it. I'd love to get to the point where I have a really good product. I can find growers, especially organic guys that they would really appreciate a good product that they could use and maybe even some of the conventional guys to see that the big thing is soil health right now I don't know of a better way to build your soil than put compost other than maybe cover crops. My dad had this exact machine he bought his brand new about 15 years ago. I was able to find this one used and I knew I wanted to find the same machine if I could do that just because I knew it it's simple and to be honest it makes a really good product. It's not aggressive but once the material starts to break down it really does a good job of incorporating the material and also incorporating the oxygen and the biggest thing that I found and in most cases you would think that you would want the machine to turn really fast. When I start off I do run it fast but as time goes on those microorganisms do more of the work than the machine does and basically what I do with this machine is I'm basically just fluffing that material and just trying to if it's reaching that temperature that I want to turn it out that's kind of my basis for when I turn but I'm not looking at being aggressive once it starts to break down and those piles get small by the end of the process so one of the downfalls of this machine is it doesn't quite fit a dump truck when you're dumping your material so you're constantly in your loader sizing up your windrows and that's the only downfall that I have with this machine so now this machine right here was I think this cost me about $15,000 which I felt was a pretty good price so they're not easy to find but if a guy can find one and there's beginning to be more and with the internet you can find them more and more this machine new with the water is probably $50,000 I think so yeah this machine has been a big boon to our operation as you can see I've got all the flails off but I did put a couple on here just to show you can see how big these knives are compared to the other machine now the reason I bought this machine was is I was getting a lot more material and I wanted to get through it quicker than I was getting through with that other machine and I wanted to do I wanted to start with a smaller particle size was the biggest thing it just really this thing is really aggressive it doesn't make as good a finished product and I would recommend that's why it's nice I really don't want to have two machines but it's worked out really well that I can start off my piles and get going on them fast and handle a lot of material I can do almost 2,500 tons an hour with this thing and then when the piles start to get smaller I come through and use that other machine of course it's more expensive and they're harder to find and I didn't like the self-contained engine but it was kind of just what worked at the time so every one of those then will have a knife it's got 80 knives on it it makes going through a heavy manure can cause a lot of issues with that other machine if you have too big of a pile this thing will go through anything it's unbelievable what's nice about the vertical beater is I've used compost spreaders in the past and I love them but we still spread manure and you can't spread and I'm not an all or nothing guy I mean sometimes you just run into problems where you don't have the time and manure is still a great product in my mind so we're able to kind of kill two birds with one stone we spread lime with it too spent lime from the beet factory so for us this was a no-brainer we probably need a couple more but this works really well and the nice thing and what I've looked at doing is I can take these beaters off and build windrows also as a barrier to entry our feedlot corresponds with the composting equipment just perfectly the only excess piece of equipment I've had to buy is a turner I mean everything else I can use in the feedlot the manure spreader this has worked out really well for adding my carbon source to my piles and then of course the spreader and then trucks and loaders you have those already that to me was just awesome when people ask about getting into composting if you have cattle already and are feeding or even just a ranch or you have the majority of the equipment already which is just huge because it's pretty easy to go and spend a lot of money on equipment if you're looking to get started without that already this is basically straight manure with we mix corn stocks and wheat straw and this stuff was screened with a quarter inch screen this is about two year old material so this would be something I would sell to a gardener the stuff that I would apply would have bigger chunks I mean this stuff as you can see there's chunks here but it breaks apart it's friable so but nothing like it when I start to turn my product I do have the end user in mind of what I don't want to sell to a local gardener or a local landscape or a product that doesn't look good and so I've come to the conclusion that that's my machine to make a good finished product and I also want to try to screen it if possible so I do have access to a screener and that makes a huge difference and there's a difference to compost most people think compost is just one big thing but some of that finished compost I'll turn 15 times if I have to do it the stuff that I put on my fields I'll do a minimum of four normally it ends up being about six, seven times it's more of an art than a science at the end of the day you have different conditions it might rain and then you've got to decide you might have a smell that doesn't quite smell right I've got to go add some carbon to it so it does take some time especially if you're trying to make that high quality product figure out what you're trying to do we made the mistake of buying one for a skidster right away and it was a complete waste of time it made a good product so someone on a small scale I would say that's a great way to start we were dealing with my DAZ business in probably three to four thousand tons a year and I would say even a loader is too small and it's too slow to do a good job I would recommend right away someone getting a machine whether it's buying yourself or with a neighbor you're not turning all year so it's probably a machine that you can trade with trade time and labor with but I would recommend getting a machine size wise this is a good way to start but like I said if you're wanting to be the most efficient a wider machine would probably be the best way to go the other mistake I think a lot of guys starting out might make is thinking they can get away with just a normal transmission tractor you basically have to have a creeper an IVT or a hydro to do a good job because when you're starting off with a big windrow no matter whether it's this machine or the other machine I'll show you you're wanting to go probably less than half a mile an hour and even slower because you're moving a lot of material and once you start breaking that material down it does get easier but you'd be riding the clutch a lot on a tractor so if I were to start and budget was the biggest thing a horizontal beater manure spreader would be able to do a pretty good job especially on a small scale because it starts that process it starts to heat it up and then if you have a loader you can come and turn it later and you've got a decent product especially if you're just putting on farm grown I'm never concerned about what other people think and if I was I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing and you don't always win you probably lose more than you win but I'm always up for a challenge and this is probably a real real challenge the thing is you've got to be committed and if you're not committed don't even start because it can be trying and a lot of people say well compost isn't worth it or whatever but I still think it's got a lot of benefits to composting so you just don't think that this can have but this is mother nature working at its finest