2. How to Set Up an Organic Compost System

Compost scales larger more efficiently than ever with bioreactors instead of compost piles. Zach Wolf demonstrates his farm’s method for creating rich, organic compost.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Zach Wolf: I’m Zach Wolf. I’m the farm manager here at Caney Fork Farms. We’re Real Organic certified, certified organic, animal welfare approved, and certified grass-fed. We have about 700 acres that we farm here in Middle Tennessee.

[00:00:16] This is our main farm, and I am on our compost pad in one of our bioreactors. We’ve been testing the material, so it’s basically a way of doing a more managed, controlled, and hopefully diverse compost. We build these out of stock panels. We put some landscape fabric on them, and basically fill them up with a combination of parent material that’s leaf mulch, wood chip, and our actual compost, main compost stock, which comes from mostly spent bedding and animal manures.

[00:00:52] And as we’re filling these reactors, we take PVC pipe, put [00:01:00] them down in the reactor, and we have a form that goes on top. And so as the material is getting dumped in these pipes are all the way down, and there’s … They’re staggered around the outer perimeter, and then there’s a couple in the middle.

[00:01:14] And the idea is that all of the material’s in the right distance between air. And so rather than having a typical windrow, like we do make, where you’re out there turning the pile, however many times through the life cycle of that pile, this is a static system. But you are building it in a way in which it has the right amount of air and water so that the organisms that you want to encourage are fed, basically.

[00:01:44] And so what we’ve been doing over the years is actually testing the material, seeing how good it is. Are we making something that’s of a different quality than our regular compost? And it’s June, it’s been super dry, and I was actually just saying to Chris “I don’t know how [00:02:00] these are gonna look,” but then I just pulled my hand back and started to kinda look unfocused, and I’m just looking at, 10s or 20, 30, 40 worms just in this little section right here.

[00:02:12] And what we found is that these are different. The material is different than our typical compost. It’s way more diverse. There’s a higher fungal count. And pretty much our new rule is if we’re putting a seed out, cover crop seed, or vegetable seed, or a transplant, that this material is in contact with that.

[00:02:34] And we screen it, and then we basically coat all of our seed with it. Yeah, and it’s usually moist enough where, if you put them out, like in those, See those black seed bins there, you can, it takes a little bit of time, but it’s about, a pound of this material to the acre.

[00:02:51] So you just figure out how many, if you’re putting out 150 pounds of seed, one pound of this to 150 pounds of seed, and you just mix it around and [00:03:00] kinda like you would a like a pea or a legume inoculant. Same idea, and then it tends to stick to the seed. We haven’t needed to use any sort of sticking agent.

[00:03:09] But we’ve just seen good results, better germination, better early performance especially when we put it out as like a drench with a transplanter. Yeah. And just that initial burst of sort of fungal activity that’s able to form right around the plant itself as it’s maturing and growing.

[00:03:29] So yeah, we’re still playing with it and the, one of the goals with the research is to actually look at crop performance, with and without the material to see if, all this effort is making a difference.

[00:03:40] If you look at one of our windrow piles here, so typically we don’t have a windrow turner.

[00:03:44] Typically, we’d come through periodically with a skid steer or a tractor and actually physically turn that windrow just to reintroduce air and mix the material and everything else. But each time we do that, it feels like we’re breaking down any sort of mycelial [00:04:00] networks. If we didn’t turn it, and especially with a manure-based pile it seems to go anaerobic and not really go through the proper composting process.

[00:04:10] So this is that sweet spot between you’re not physically disturbing it, the material just sits, but you’ve built it in a way where air can move through it. And if it’s over-aerated, theoretically, you’re not gonna get the right breakdown, and if you create these chambers and they’re too far apart, it could also go anaerobic in the wrong direction.

[00:04:32] So what what the researchers with David Johnson has found is that there is this appropriate ratio, and we try to build them following those guidelines. And I know that people all over the country, seems like all over the world, has seen them in different places outside of the US are starting to play with this.

[00:04:51] And that’s a direction that we wanna move into too, because these are great. We’ve got six of ’em. But, like, how do you [00:05:00] scale it beyond this? And it’s so potent you don’t need a lot of material, but I’d love to be able to put this out at a broader scale across all of our acreage. We’re working with ways of building these in with some of our compost bunkers, our manure handling systems.