| Marion SWCD turns waste into resource |
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Written by Weisha Mize, Oregon Department of Agriculture
As anyone with an animal knows, be it a pet, 4-H project or working animal, what goes in as food must come out as – well, manure. When you have several animals, managing the end result can quickly become a big challenge. For the annually increasing number of small acreage farms with multiple horses, llamas, sheep or other sizeable poo producers, and the output quickly exceeds most landowners’ needs or ability to store or apply the fertilizer at an appropriate rate for the land and crops to utilize. What’s a farmer to do?
Not only has the amount of waste become a management problem, animal and human wastes are a potential source for about 150 diseases, including Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. These bacteria reside in the intestines of all warm-blooded animals. Nutrients in the manure can threaten human health and cause water quality problems such as algae and low dissolved oxygen levels. Then there are the ever-increasing number of urban and suburban gardeners in search of soil amendments, organic fertilizers, and lovely compost, available at some relatively steep prices and sold in non-biodegradable plastic bags. Help!
Look! Up in the sky! It’s Mighty Manure Exchange!
Enter Marion SWCD with the perfect solution, a new free program benefiting livestock owners and gardeners alike. The Manure Exchange Program brings together gardeners and landowners searching for sources of local, free, organic fertilizer with livestock owners and managers with excess fresh and composted manure.
The goal of the program is to help farmers that need to dispose of manure because they do not have the land available to utilize the nutrients on their farm. The program works in conjunction with the local Agricultural Water Quality Plan by removing a potential source of water pollution from farms. It benefits others in the community seeking a nearby source for fresh fertilizer. And, it’s a great way to recycle our natural resources!
Excrement exchange –what a concept!
The idea for the exchange program was first brought to Marion SWCD by OSU extension staff. “They were hoping that Oregon’s conservation districts might want to take the lead in finding manure sources and developing exchange programs locally and that's just what we did!” says Mary Logalbo of Marion SWCD. Two other SWCD staff, Luca DeStefanis and Robin Straughan, developed some of the initial program forms, and when Mary began working with Marion SWCD in January 2007, she became the lead for the program. “I developed a webpage for the program, contacted possible sources, created additional information forms for participants and advertised the Manure Exchange List once we had enough sources. It’s a whole new aspect of manure management,” laughs Mary.
High demand and growing
The district maintains a list of livestock owners that wish to share their manure. The Marion SWCD currently has 13 manure sources, which Mary signed up by calling over 50 participants from a Horse Workshop the SWCD held in 2006. Livestock owners provide information on how they wish to be contacted, the type of manure they have, and where they are located in the District. Any interested gardeners can obtain the list from the SWCD office or from the Marion SWCD Web site. “I expect this list will be expanding, based on the number of signup packets that have been requested,” Mary adds. “This program really is growing and has great potential to benefit the community and the environment. I’ve already been contacted by 30 interested gardeners and I just got another call today. Most of them heard about this program from the press release published in the local newspaper.”
Weed whacking
Marion SWCD’s Web site also offers excellent advice for gardeners who may be considering using manure for fertilizer, covering important questions such as how to determine how much to get (agronomic rate), the difference between fresh and composted manure, what type of manure is best for different uses, and – most important from this author’s perspective – weed management!
Many people avoid using manure, especially horse manure, because of the urban (or rural) myth that they will get a whole new variety of weed seeds in the manure. Marion SWCD clears this up in their on-line Gardener’s Guide in three to-the-point statements:
1) Most weeds in manure piles come from seeds of weed plants growing near the pile.
2) Horses don’t “poop” out more weeds than cows.
3) Compost the manure pile, or get composted manure when possible.
Why is composting so important?
The heat and time involved in composting kills most weed seeds. Unless the farmer has tested the pile to determine weed seed viability, Marion SWCD recommends that you treat it as raw organic matter, and cover and compost it for a couple of months before using it in the garden. Cover it with a tarp, turn it with a garden fork once a week, water it to the moisture content equivalent of a wrung-out sponge, and re-tarp. Properly managed, even fresh manure will be composted and ready to go in three short weeks! For more information on composting manure please visit OSU Extension's webpage, http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/em/em8825-e/ , or search on the terms “manure compost” at http://extension.oregonstate.edu/.
Horse poo is perfect!
Horse owners are fortunate in that horse manure is an ideal composting material. Horse manure has a carbon:nitrogen ratio that is almost perfectly balanced to the needs of the micro-organisms that perform composting action. If the structure and moisture level of the compost pile is maintained correctly, naturally occurring chemical compounds in the manure will be rapidly stabilized, reducing the potential for them to escape into the environment with an adverse impact. Additionally, the volume of the material will be reduced to about one-third of its original mass.For more information on the program or to sign up as a manure donor, contact Marion SWCD at 503-391-9927, or check out their website, http://www.marionswcd.net/manure.html to find a source of manure near you.
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