OH,
At Disneyland, they have horses drawning an old fashioned tram giving rides to people. These horses are fitted with a heavy duty bag for collecting the various wastes. So Chantel would not need her bucket I have only ever seen them use female horses though.
Lottie Lou wrote:I own horses and it is a big problem to find someone to take the muck heap away - each horse generates a wheelbarrow full a day so that is alot of waste!
Snap!
We still have muck from at least 2 years ago and winter is fast approaching again.
We've tried offering it to local allotment holders free, but they aren't too keen to take it away and seem to prefer paying the local farmer for cow manure.
There was a write-up in the NSALG magazine about this problem. I will see if I can find it. My recollection was that things are not as tight as it appears on the face of it, but anyway where are the hordes of inspectors to impose it. The UK is the laughing-stock of EU inasmuch as we take notice of all these laws, the other lot seem to carry on as they have always done.
We got chicken manure very cheaply for some years until they brought laws in so the farmer could not let us have it.
Even if your facts are correct, one thing still puzzles me. How does the stuff get from farm A to farm B. We do our 20 mile run each way at leat 3 times a week, we see straw, potatoes,apples etc. machinery on the move regularly, in the 17 plus years we have NEVER seen a load of manure on the move. Do they only travel at night or maybe they use the drovers roads cross-country.
Allan
Come off it, Johnboy. that is a misquote. I was referring to the necessity to replenish P & K chiefly. It is the loss of these in crops and in exported manure that breaks what there is of the recycling, apart from inevitable losses. If it is not got from somewhere else the shortage will eventually reduce the ability of the land to crop economically. No amount of carbon based bulk or green manuring will put that right.Trace elements are not generally a problem, and it is easy enough to find bulky carbon-based material, even nitrates and nitrites are relatively easy and are short-term anyway.
Historically it was the discovery of how to recycle phosphates solubly from imported bones that made feeding the masses in the industrial revolution possible.
This is not in anyway to decry the importance of bulky carbon-based material in maintaining the condition of the soil but that alone won't square the circle.
I suppose we are very lucky on our allotment site to have an arrangment with a local Charity Farm - not really a farm as such but they have horses - do weddings, rent out their fields etc. and have other farm animals , chickens ducks etc.
They have an old tractor and trailer and when the trailer is full they bring it round to our site and drop it off to any plotholder which has ordered at £10 a load.
Very few stables have their own transport these days which is why having to collect your own is not always a viable option because of the amount needed.
But 'every little helps'as they say.
My horse manure is delivered by a very large and nice horsey lady and her partner using a landrover and an electrically powered tipping trailer. God knows how they load it, I suspect a bobcat or semi-knakered frontlift of some sort.
My cow manure comes on a non-tipping trailer behind a diahatsu pickup and is loaded and unloaded by shovel by the smallholder.
With regard to Allans point, I do sometimes see eight wheel lorries with very deep tipper/reinforced square rear bodies , stuffed full of shit on the M1, does it perhaps go to commercial composting organisations?
Up past Thetford, but in the forest, one sees huge, and I do mean huge, piles of gently steaming shredded forstry waste turnig into, one presumes, Forestbark or some such tradename.
Do not put off thanking people when they have helped you, as they may not be there to thank later.
My best friend has 3 horses, and a growing muck heap...
They offered it to people near them (hence the transportation thing) and only one person took it up... they brough round about 5 plastic dustbins and once they were full, took them away!
We get rubble sacks full of horse poo from them (the horses live out much of the year) and are slowly building our own muck heap! First lots of properly useable stuff will be ready in spring *cross fingers*
peter the large lorries are probably the mushroom industry, mushrooms are basicaly grown on a heap of animal poo. in general there is not a mass market for animal poo in most cases it is used as a fertiliser on the farm that produced it. thats a generalisation which refers to cattle and sheep. the farms which have a surplus are the industrial poultry and pig producers each unit tends to have local arrangements for disposal as a fertilier on nearby farms. the poultry stuff is handled as a solid in open trailers whereas the pig stuff is normally in a slurry with water and handled in tankers, hope this clarifies this fasinating subject for you all
Allan,
These are your actual words and I see no mention of P&K. I can only respond to what you have written not what was in your thoughts!
Quote
Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:07 am
The point I am getting round to is that Compo may have something in using the almost inevitable buildup of weeds and grass in the winter to do your green manuring for you. We seem to be hooked on a regime where the weeds are killed off and the soil lays bare all winter with losses of essentials and then bring in material from elsewhere to replace it, with a good chance that the farmer supplying it has used chemicals to grow it having sold off his valuable manure to the gardener. Time was when with mixed farming this didn't happen.
Organic it may be but not good for the environment.
Allan
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I quite rightly described that as total nonsense and I am still of that opinion.
JB.
"I quite rightly described that as total nonsense and I am still of that opinion."
JB.
It's only your opinion that you are quite right about this and everything else. Many others of us can disagree.
I have only ever seen them use female horses though.
