Once you start it’s hard to stop & get good photos
But….it was a perfect Adelaide Hills Autumn Day. The evening before saw 20+ mm of rain fall but the dawn saw a perfect day that allowed us to get our annual preparation made efficiently and with lots of conversation and catching up.
First up the compost preps, we collected some nettles to make 504 and stuffed them into their terra pot, next we made 505, .503, 506.We went to retrieve 502 which had been made lasts spring and had been hanging in the walnut tree all summer but it had disappeared. It was finally located down the hill – last weeks storm had broken its string and set it free All the compost preps except 505 where buried in Deb’s garden to transform over the winter.
The manure then arrived to fill the horns, we tried this new technique of putting a straw down the horn to prevent the air gap but gave up on this thinking it was useful for machine filling and our hand method did not require it.
It was then off to the burial pit down the valley to bury the horns & finally bury the 505 down in the swamp.
Next we were supposed to stop for morning tea but it did not happen instead we got stuck into the next job at hand being the making of 3 different sized barrel compost /cowpat pit. Being still inspired by Peter Proctor’s Indian experience we set about mixing the manure by hand for and hour. We use a kneading method which is such a wonderful unexpected experience .After the hour the compost preps were added to the 3 pit and our experiment had begun.
