Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #54: Joel Salatin's Tips on How to Become a “Biomass Vulture”

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Episode #54: Joel Salatin's Tips on How to Become a “Biomass Vulture” · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: My point is be a scavenger, be a biomass carbon vulture, you know, be a scavenger that's constantly on the lookout.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I do.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, out here in the country, we don't scavenge people's leaves, but we're constantly looking for, you know, that uh that old weathered uh batch of like round bales sitting on the edge of the field.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the farmer's not going to use it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go over and pay him five bucks and and bring all those round bales home?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Any kind of carbonaceous uh of carbon material.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are certainly industrial places that you can get.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can get you can go to a sawmill.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a sawmill, you know, you can go and get loads of of uh bark mulch.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to a um, I mean, you can buy this stuff from the sawmill by the load.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can go to a, you know, um, like a nursery, a landscape outfit, and you can get it by the load.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Carbon.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Carbon acquisition is the key to everything.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough here with farmer Joel Salatin.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And today we have a special treat.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Joel is going to give his first tip in helping you become food independent.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Today he's going to talk about how to accumulate biomass and its many uses.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Joel, I've got my pen and paper.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ready.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Cena.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the one of the biggest uh, I think, disconnects in the entire kind of do-it-yourself food food growing movement in the urban, especially in the urban sector, is just this whole understanding of where of the importance of carbon, where does carbon fit?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so you have to understand that nature, let's back up a minute.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we look at nature's template, but before people could buy, go down to Lowe's and buy, you know, peat moss in a in a bag and that sort of and bark mulch and all this.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: How did nature build fertility?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: How did nature uh handle all that?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all it's all carbon-based.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the sun shines, a plant grows, the plant then uh can uh decomposes, whether it's a grass plant, a log in the woods, or whatever.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, that decomposition is what drives all of the all of the biology.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: That that's what the that's what the microbes in the soil live on.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: They live on decomposing vegetation, decomposing vegetation.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so in a in an urban sector, um, you know, you you're your you're c if you want to grow things, if you want to um put some bedding in for chickens, so they're you know, so they're on a on a on a compost.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you if if you want to have a compost pile, uh you've got to accumulate biomass, you've got to accumulate carbon.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: When I say biomass, I'm being very generic.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um just it's it's biomass is anything, any plant material that used to be growing.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so where are you gonna get this?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the first place uh I think to get it is from lawn clippings.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, if if you have any lawn at all, um you're gonna you're gonna generate some with lawn clippings.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, uh a bag on your lawn mower.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and here's the beautiful thing the key to generating those clippings is to mow your lawn real high.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The higher you mow your lawn, the more grass it will produce.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you mow it real short, the grass doesn't remember the chlorophyll on the blades of the grass, that's a solar collector.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: You want more soil.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if you mow it real short, uh you're depriving the grass of its solar collector.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we always mow our lawn on the highest lawn mower setting there is, the highest setting there is.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: You will generate three times as many uh lawn clippings as you will if you mow it real short.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be less drought prone, uh, and it'll be much more like a you know, much more like a pasture or a field.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so you know, uh utilize your lawn there as a as a biomass uh producer, and you'd be surprised how much material you can get from from your lawn in clippings.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh next one would be just leaves.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You got some trees when you rake your leaves.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every year I go through town um and I go through these, you know, these kind of urban, uh, urban and suburban lots, and you see everybody's everybody has dutifully raked their leaves out to the curb.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I mean, and there are miles of them, there's piles of them, of course.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and of course, you know, a truck comes along with a great big, you know, vacuum cleaner and it, you know, it sucks up all those leaves and takes it to some uh some place.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so these leaves are tremendous.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you think how do you think soil is built in nature?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not built with bags of 10, 10, 10 chemical fertilizer.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even built with lows, with with bags of bark mulch from lows.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's built with the carbon that falls on site.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in nature, carbon doesn't move very far.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, leaves might blow a little bit, but they don't they don't go very far.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Grass, if it grows up and falls over, it doesn't it doesn't go very far, it stays on site.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so nature, nature's template is all about bathing itself in its own carbon on site.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so so um, so you know, you when you rake your leaves, you're gonna you're gonna uh put them in a bag, you're gonna put them in a get a couple of uh you know uh old uh pallets or something, make a little uh place to store them in, and and store your leaves on site.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And may I add, go pick up all the neighbors' leaves.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do you, you know, how do you how's an easy way to transport those leaves?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: A real easy way to transport them is to take a heavy uh a tarp, just get a you know, a 10-foot by 10-foot tarp, and you can just scrape those leaves onto a tarp, and with a couple people, you can pick up those, uh, you know, a big old tarp and you can um dump it in your truck, or you can you can tie up the four corners, drag it over to your yard.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can at least get all the leaves from your neighbors.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my my point is um when you're when you're looking at those leaves around in the fall, look at that as a as a fertility gold mine.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the point.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That that's what you're trying to find.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Another one, of course, is chips.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are numerous crews, arborists.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh call up, you know, there's there's numerous arborists that do tree work, and they have to pay sometimes up to a hundred dollars a ton to dump their chips, like at the landfill.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell them, hey, uh you come dump them here, and I'll give you some uh some pumpkin muffins or you know, uh, you know, some zucchini bread.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that'll usually, you know, uh affect those guys.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And have them come and dump their chips at your place.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you see them working nearby, you know, stop by and and and tell them, hey, you come up there and and uh uh we like we like those chips.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Often you can go and get chips from you know from places um like like our our city of Stanton, uh here, it's a city of you know 20,000 people, they actually have a leaf dump uh where when they vacuum up all the leaves from the city, you can go they take them and dump them there.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a mountain.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a I mean it it's as it's it's bigger than a house.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mountain.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you can go and shovel those leaves into your truck and uh bring them home.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can shovel chips, they they chip up the uh the Christmas trees um uh in the in the winter because uh chipped up trees are a lot easier to transport than than full trees.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh you can find chips.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So my point is be a scavenger, be a biomass carbon um um vulture, you know, be a scavenger that's constantly on the lookout.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I do.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, out here in the country, we we don't we don't you know we don't scavenge people's leaves, but we're constantly looking for you know that uh that old weathered uh batch of like round bale sitting on the edge of the field.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the farmer's not going to use it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go over and pay him five bucks and and bring all those round bales home and uh and uh you know just just any kind of carbonaceous uh of carbon material?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I mean there there are there are certainly industrial places that you can get.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can get you can go to a sawmill.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a sawmill, you know, you can go and get loads of of uh bark mulch.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to a um, I mean, you you can buy this stuff from the sawmill by the load.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can go to a you know, um, like a nursery, a landscape outfit, and you can get it by the load.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But carbon, carbon acquisition is the key to everything when it comes to starting a compost pile, a garden for mulch material, or if you want to put in a flock of chickens and you've got a very, very small area, um, you're gonna want those chickens not to be on dirt.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, unless you have a pretty expansive yard, you don't even want to move the chickens around your yard because then the kids are gonna bring in it, be bringing chicken poo into the house all the time.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um, Cena, I doubt that you want uh chicken manure in your house all the time.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, preferably not.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Preferably not.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So so your your um so my encouragement is if you have a very small area, is to not free range those chickens.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know that we were it's almost iconic free range chickens.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like the you know, like the holy grail of chickens, but uh believe me, chickens are very, very happy to be on a on a deep bedded, uh high carbon like compost pile.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: They can uh scratch in it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It grows worms and rolly polies and all sorts of bugs and things that they want to scratch out.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: They are perfectly happy uh if you give them about you know uh uh six or seven square feet per bird, it doesn't take much.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and you give them a nice deep uh deep bedding pack, and um they'll be very, very happy.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you won't have poop in your yard, the kids won't be bringing it in, it won't smell because the carbon you know absorbs everything.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that those are that those are some those are some uses.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So as you as you start, you know, a raised bed garden, you know, whatever you're whatever you're growing with plants, that carbon then uh becomes your fertility engine because it's the decomposition of the carbon that drives the entire soil fertility building program.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Cena, have you uh you know, where you live, can you think of places that you can um that you can acquire some of this stuff?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it is it in the community, isn't it, is it in a neighborhood?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Have you have you been aware of it?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there there are places here that you can get some of these things.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what I want to know, what I'm okay, so somebody like me who's just starting out doing these things, um, so I'm I'm following you on get the lawn clippings, the specifics about that, get the leaves, um, get the chips.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I'm gonna be looking for um lawn clippings, leaves, and chips that have not been sprayed with any chemicals, right?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I get that I can procure those and become a biomass vulture.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then so I'm a little stuck on what do I do with it?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe this is a bigger topic for like a another podcast that you can talk to us about how to compost.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we can save that one.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: But you mentioned, for instance, like the chicken padding.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can just give that example, uh, so I have these three um you know, biomass uh sources, producers.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do to make the chicken bedding now that I have these things?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a that's a great, it's a great, it's a great question, yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So so imagine um we're all familiar with chicken runs, you know, um not not the little uh doc movie chicken run, but uh chicken runs, you know, um where chickens have have some sort of an alley, some sort of a you know, a run with a coop uh attached to it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and we and probably most of us have seen some backyard chickens that's that smell, stink, and it's just dirt.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes where the chickens are just out there in dirt and they're scratching in the dirt.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Scratching in the dirt, right, right.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's not good.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's not good.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: What you want is you want to you want to offer what I call a carbonaceous diaper, a carbonaceous diaper for those chickens, uh and and essentially let them build their own compost.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the big uh one of the big whatever you know issues, problems with compost is you know, you need to turn it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to aerate it and turn it all the time.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's use animals to do that.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine making, let's say you've got uh let's say you got five chickens.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Say you got five chickens, so you're gonna want to give them about 50 square feet, which would be uh what five five feet by 10 feet.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be 50 square feet.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that big, five feet by 10 feet, all right.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want to give them a Taj Mahal, give them 10 feet, 10 feet by 10 feet, all right.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and this is gonna be enclosed, okay, and it's not gonna be covered, uh, at least you know, covered for rain.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you you actually want the rain to come in there and and and dampen it because you can't compost unless it's a little bit damp.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, if you want to put a you want to put a uh like a uh a shade cloth, you know, some bird netting over the top just to keep uh birds out and let the rain come through, but you know, not allow predators or anything to come in, that's good.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hardware cloth, you know, that's fine.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, you're gonna essentially make sideboards.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got your five by ten, your ten by ten, whatever it is, eight by ten, you got your you got your thing, and you're gonna make sideboards up about two feet.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine 24 inches.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So so almost like a raised bed, and you're going to fill that with your wood chips, leaves, lawn clippings.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna dump them in there, and the chickens are gonna eat some of them, but mainly they're just gonna scratch them and they're gonna aerate, they're gonna aerate that that bedding pack.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, it's deep, and they're gonna, you're gonna be amazed, they're gonna they're gonna turn it down.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Goodness, they'll go um, you know, a foot, 18 inches even deep, and they'll they'll they'll fluff in there, they'll aerate it, they'll actually, you know, make holes and lie down in it because it's kind of cool.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um over time, that all of that material will turn into potting soil.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: All that material will gradually turn, and you can throw your throw your kitchen scraps in there.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, even bones, even meat, whatever.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you you know, if you find a uh a possum in the road that somebody ran over, bring it home, put it in.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Chickens are car, chickens are omnivores.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: They love they love a possum.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you find a bureaucrat sitting out along the road, bring him in, dump him in there as well.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those, what one of those new 87,000 uh IRSA, you know, you can dump him in.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and and uh so so you know it's fine.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and those the the the thing is, those chickens will peck, they'll scratch, they'll aerate, and they'll work on that material.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to turn it, you don't have to spade it, you don't have to do anything.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let the chickens do the work, they'll be happy to do it, and as it begins to decompose, it will actually attract an entire biological community.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It'll earthworms will come into it, roly pulleys will come into it, um uh fungus and molds and little mushrooms will grow up in it, and the chickens will eat those too.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And all sorts of things will happen in that in that material.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you're ready to plant some tomatoes, or you're ready to um, you know, plant some flowers or or a fruit tree or some blackberries or something like that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're going to have an extremely rich uh fertile material medium.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna have to go to Lowe's and buy it, you're not gonna have to go to Home Depot, you're actually creating your own your own fertilizer factory that that has been created by the chickens aerating biomass that you've accumulated on site and from your neighbors.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's amazing.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So so these chickens, um, they're creating compost.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Would you call this compost?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, does it it also serves as fertilizer, though?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like double a double thing.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: It it is double.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the chickens are adding their manure to it, which is adding nitrogen to it.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the carbon that you've used now, you know, green lawn clippings, green lawn clippings will pretty much compost by themselves.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're they've got enough nitrogen in them.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so compost needs carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, water, and microbes.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's it's the five, the five recipe uh of uh the five ingredient recipe of compost is carbon, nitrogen, water, um, oxygen, and microbes, all right, in in the proper percentage.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if it gets too wet, then it'll all you know get slimy and and kind of pickley.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: If it gets too dry, uh it just kind of you know gets does not do anything.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why you don't want to cover this.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you want to let the rain come in because the rain's gonna, you know, give it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but when I say 24 inches, that's deep.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm going with this.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The the the single biggest mistake that people make on these kinds of things is they never make it deep enough.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they they just make it like six six inches.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Six inches won't compost.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Six inches isn't deep enough to accumulate the depth to create the biological community, all the microbes to to give them a safe haven to to thrive and to live.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you've got to get up there deep.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, preferably 24 inches.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even 36 is not too much.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and that this becomes, I want you to appreciate this is this becomes um a an almost living, living organism, a living community.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and and that's what you're trying to build, is this living community that that all these, you know, the actinomy CTs and the mycelium and the gibberillins and the azotobacter and all these things, they're all in there working and they're they're eating this carbon that you've fed them.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you're and the chickens, because of their scratching, they're actually speeding up the decomposition process.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: You could, yes, you could take all this stuff, put it in a pile, and leave it for three years and have compost.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the chickens will take that and give us compost in six or seven months.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, all this is about speeding up what nature already does, speeding it up so that it actually is usable and and uh ready to go a lot sooner.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So now I'm starting to get a better appreciation for why you love chickens and you give me a hard time about me having so many dogs.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like the chicken does seem very useful.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh chick chickens are chickens are extremely uh useful.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and if if you give them a lot of room, you know, the chickens will actually pick up a lot of their diet, a lot of their diet just from the bugs in the compost.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, but again, it's got it's got to be deep.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be six inches, it can't be eight inches, it's gotta be, it's gotta be well over 12 inches.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So be this is one time when you can be liberal.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Be liberal with your carbon, be liberal with the with the height of your sideboards, and um, and and you know, it'll be uh it'll work.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It the the chickens will get in there and they will be happy as can be.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: There will be no smell, no odor.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can go in and sit on a five gallon bucket with them and eat your sandwich for lunch.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's it's just it's it's it's wonderful.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bare dirt, bare ground is the worst hygienic, worst pathogen situation for animals, all animals.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: All animals.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why in nature, animals move.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't stay in the same place.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: They move.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of moving mechanisms from fire to um you know to weather to parasites to flies to predators there to human hunting.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things that make animals move in nature because um because for their own good, they need to they need to get you know fresh ground.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so the so the beauty of this compost is the compost becomes a self-sanitizing medium.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I call it the carbonaceous diaper.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a self-sanitizing medium.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh compost breaks down, compost actually breaks down pesticides, it breaks down herbicides, um, because all those little microbes and those fungi, they actually eat there are so many different uh varieties.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Cena, you and I did a we did a podcast a while back with the Jurassic Park uh uh scientist that's finding all these things to well you know um there are those kinds of microbes they're they're not all prehistoric.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and and you know, we only right now, like in the soil, the soil, we only know uh 10% of the microbes that are in soil are named.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: 90% are not named and do things we don't even know.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this what I'm describing here becomes almost like a you know, it it's it's almost like magic, uh, where you know you you put in this you put in this raw ingredient and you let the chickens work on it for a while, and in six months you've got you've got potting soil.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's um it's amazing.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that's a way, that's a way to generate your own fertilizer.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a way to have backyard chickens, even if you only have a postage stamp, uh yard, you you can have those chickens.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in my book, Polyface uh micro, I even describe how to do this in a Manhattan apartment uh with three chickens in a Manhattan apartment.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, so you just the thing is you have a you have a box, you have a carbon-holding box underneath the chickens.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes it work.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that and that diaper, all that carbon, that carbon detoxifies, absorbs, and and is provides the sponginess, um, and and the uh and and the actual, you know, it actually becomes a microbiome.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes its own microbiome under the chickens to maintain sanitation and hygiene and health.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's fantastic.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, your neighbors would never know because there's no smell and such.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Think of also like from the from the human health perspective, I'm thinking of how great that is that you'd be sitting there breathing in these good microbes.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, right, you just created, even if you're in the city, um, you know, in the crust of it, you're creating this great microbiome environment for your gastrointestinal tract to breathe that all in.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're almost out of time, but I wanted to ask um a quick question.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned how the um this this compost you're creating requires a specific ratio of the you know, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and whatnot.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're looking at you have long clippings, leaves, and chips, is what is the ratio that I'm adding um to make this this diaper?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a certain amount of each one.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can I add more?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna mess it up if I add too much of too many leaves, for instance?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in yeah, in general, um green, green stuff, green stuff will pretty much uh decompose just by itself, but brown stuff uh needs more nitrogen.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Green stuff already has the nitrogen in it, like like green leaves.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you're putting in green leaves or green lawn clippings, that is that that that'll just that doesn't need any nitrogen at all.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what you're looking for, and and we'll we'll we'll you know we'll get a little bit too uh much into weeds here, maybe, but uh what you're looking for is a is a night is a carbon to nitrogen.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's written, you know, C dot uh uh colon N, C N ratio of about 30 to one, 30 30 carbon to one nitrogen.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't expect anybody to you know to know all these things.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you want to get, if you want to really delve into this, you can get like the Rodale Complete Book of Composting, and they have pages and pages and pages of all different kinds of materials and what their CN ratio is.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so you could actually, if you wanted to get really technical, you could actually you know weigh things on a scale and actually formulate a perfect CN ratio.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I don't do that, I would discourage anybody from doing that.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just realize that if you've got too much carbon, gradually the chicken manure will bring the nitrogen to its right, to its rightful place.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got if if you've got too much nitrogen, it'll probably get a little bit slimy and and and smell like uh smell pickley, uh, smell a little bit um uh have an odor.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um if if you smell if you smell ammonia, um, then you certainly have too much nitrogen.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But uh in general, as long as those chickens are aerating and there's no and there's no and it smells like like humus, like just you know, forest soil, um, you know, you're you're in good shape.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess my my bottom line here is Cena, instead of trying to micromanage it, let time be your friend.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let time be your friend, and don't be in a hurry.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you can, you know, uh babysit it, mother over it, fool with it, you know, all that, and try to speed it up.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's why these, you know, these compost tumblers and turners.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Think about how many times have you seen the you know these backyard, like like you put your leaves in a in a big, like a barrel, you know, and you can tumble it, rotate these compost turns.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, instead of doing that, we're just using chickens.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: That the whole the whole idea of the tumbler turner is to aerate it, that because it needs oxygen.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you you you tumble it and aerate it.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So all I'm suggesting is instead of instead of buying a you know a$300 uh tumbler turner deal, um, just you know, use it, use it, let chickens do all that work, and you get eggs while it's being tumbled and turned.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the chickens are doing all the tumbling and turning.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You you've probably seen these diagrams of of of uh of compost piles that are in three three bins.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: You got three bins, one's the one you're doing, and then you can shovel it into this one, and then you can shovel it into that one.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there's no shoveling here.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's no shoveling, there's no movement, there's nothing, there's no, there's no bins, there's no uh, you know, all this stuff.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just uh you're you're doubling up your chickens uh with your compost, creating your fertility and making healthy chickens, and you're eating eggs uh as you need them, and it's it's a it's it's a very uh win-win situation.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love this idea.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this, you know, one of the reasons why I haven't been successful in composting is well, you know, one year my dog ate the compost, but uh but but it was it was like work.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: I had to keep tending to it, like you're saying, put it on the calendar.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta go out and water it now.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now on the calendar, I gotta go out and shovel it, you know.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I like this idea that the chickens can just do it for me.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what a fun project for the kids.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what kid doesn't want to just go?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go throw the the clippings into the chicken coop.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's fantastic.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, I love this.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now I feel inspired.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I really appreciate you sharing this.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I learned so much.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is my thing.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a biomass vulture.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Biomass vulture.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am a biomass vulture.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I love it.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a great, that's a great, uh, great phrase.
• 30:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this one's great.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I am looking, this is our first tip, right, behind the paywall.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is fantastic.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I'm looking forward to the next tip, I have some ideas, but we uh we still want to encourage all of our subscribers that if you have a topic you want Joel or I to address, like more tips from Joel, just email us.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the email is actually in the show description box.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: So email us.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: We do check those emails, and you know, we're here to respond to your requests as well.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Joel, thank you so much.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: This has been so enlightening, and I look forward to the next one.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Super, Cena.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all for listening, and we'll check you next time.