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Right, can’t resist it any longer, like any good organic farmer I’m going to talk about muck! Farmyard muck (FYM) to be precise.
There are rules and regs covering the storage of FYM, which apply to all farms. These are basically aimed at minimising any pollution while the FYM is stored on the farm and when it is applied to the ground. Organic farms need to go one stage further: FYM is a major source of nutrients to be returned to the soil and the only one we can use quite freely.
One of the requirements of organic farming is that animals housed over the winter have to be provided with straw for bedding. This is actually quite helpful as it does then do away with the requirement to provide means of collecting liquid run off from the buildings as it is all absorbed by the straw. During the winter we regularly extract dung from the buildings and then at the end of the winter the buildings are cleared out completely. It is then left to compost before it is spread on the fields. The composting raises the temperature so that hopefully any worm eggs, general bugs and weed seeds are killed off. It is then spread on the fields after the hay and haylage have been made. This meets the SA requirement that it allowed to compost for three months and makes good use of the nutrients as the grass on those fields will be actively growing following harvest.
So the farm needed somewhere to store
the FYM and, to meet the rules and regs and to reduce nutrient loss, an
effluent tank to collect dirty water runoff from the midden.
Guess what we have being doing this summer!
First decide how many cows we are
ultimately going to keep. This is determined by the farm’s ability to produce
winter fodder- hay, haylage, silage. It is a requirement of organic farming
that the majority of the conserved fodder is home produced and it is a
straight economic necessity as well, given the cost of hauling low value bulk
items! Calculate how much muck this number of cattle will produce and
therefore the capacity of the midden. Fit this capacity into the space there
is, calculate the surface area and multiply by the winter rainfall for the
area to give the size of effluent tank.
Two months of very hard work and a learning curve so steep it would be better described as a cliff and we have a new midden and effluent tank all signed off and working.