Decatur Island
(written by Peter Moon)

For those of you who have visited the Pacific Northwest, you know what a beautiful part of the world this is, especially if you've spent any time in the San Juan Islands. Over the past 20 years, I have had the wonderful opportunity to spend time with friends on Decatur Island in a small community known as Decatur Northwest.

The residents at "Decatur" have lived with a green ethic for as long as anyone can remember and in keeping with this ethic, they have composted all of their green waste, livestock manure and food waste to produce compost for use in their vegetable and flower gardens. In fact, sustainability is simply part of island life, given the difficulty and cost of bringing anything over from the mainland.

Over the years, I have mentioned to my friend Dean Nichols that there is a faster and simpler way to compost by using aeration instead of turning the pile (which quite honestly seldom if ever happened). Earlier this year, I donated an O2Compost Macro-Bin system to Decatur and, after much discussion and planning, we began construction on June 26.

At this point, the system is about 90% constructed as shown in the pictures below. One of the best parts of this project is that we will be using Western Red Cedar lumber milled from wind-fall trees on the island. I had the opportunity to help with the milling process during a recent visit and it was entirely too much fun. The cedar planks will result in a beautiful, if not "elegant" compost system, to be sure. In fact, a lathe-turned finial is planned for the top of each post.

I will follow up with more pictures and the back half of the story in our September newsletter.

In addition to being a very fun project, the reason that I bring this up is that composting is well suited for all organic residuals, not just horse and other livestock manure. It is an ideal way for small communities, summer camps and retreats, public works, school districts, etc. to take advantage of a very simple technology. It lends itself to both year round and seasonal operation and can accommodate a wide variety of waste materials, including paper, cardboard and some of the newly developed compostable utensils and "plastic" bags.

If you know a community or camp that can take advantage of on-site composting, perhaps you too can make a donation toward sustainability.

Micro-Biology Composting

"Composting is a Biologically Mediated Process", as we in the organics industry are fond of saying. While it is absolutely true, O2Compost does not delve very deeply into the micro-biology of composting with our Training Programs for two reasons: 1) this knowledge is not necessary to effectively operate an on-farm system; and 2) most people don't have time in their lives for this type of academic discussion.

However, there are those of you who would like to learn more about the phases of composting and the microscopic critters who do so much work on our behalf (i.e. bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa and rotifers). If you are one of these people, we encourage you to click on this link: http://compost.css.cornell.edu/microorg.html. It will take you to the excellent Cornell University website. Enjoy!

Solar Powered Composting

O2Compost has made significant progress in the past two months with our new Solar Energy System. Working with Rhino Manufacturing in Snohomish, Washington, we have asembled all of the various components into a locking, weatherproof cabinet that is easy to install and operate. Everything is UL Listed. The size (and cost) of the Solar Energy System is determined by the volume of material that will be composted and hence the size of the blower needed for aeration. If you are considering solar power for your farm, please give us a call for a quote.

The best part is that you don't need to know anything about solar power to install and operate the Solar Energy System with your compost unit. All you do is follow the instructions to mount the photovoltaic panel (PV), connect a grounding wire and two plugs from the PV to the cabinet, and flip two switches to activate the power outlet. You will be up and running in no time.

As part of our ongoing research and development, the first cabinet has been installed at our "O2Compost Field Laboratory" (Peter's home). In the next week or so, we will be setting up a new batch of compost for a test run in the proto-type Macro-Bin composter. This batch will include 50% horse manure and bedding mixed with 50% dairy manure plus 150 pounds of salmon per cubic yard. The finished compost will be cured, screened to a 1/4-inch minus texture, and test marketed to home gardeners. The goal is to produce the highest quality compost possible and to distribute it in 4-quart bags for use in raised beds, house plants, and container garden applications.

The results will be reported in our September newsletter, along with a "free sample" offer of the fish compost.