We are always working on lowering waste and closing our resource cycle, and right now are focused on improving our composting program and soil sourcing! After mulling it over for a while, we have switched from mined vermiculite to the agro-byproduct organic rice hulls for soil aeration, and are diving headlong into integrating probiotic cultures to our compost system and microgreen/plant production. This will speed up and improve our composting process, while improving our plants’ health, and as a result yours, ours, our chicken’s, and our soil’s. Sounds pretty good to me!
Over the past couple of weeks we made a successful batch of wild cultured lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from organic rice and local raw milk and have an all local experiment brewing now, with local wheat berry water, local raw milk, and soon local maple syrup- we’ll add this to a bucket of shredded knotweed stalks to make a bokashi style compost additive. We discovered that the milk solid byproducts of this process are a fermented sour cream/cream cheese and a soft curd, somewhere between cottage cheese and ricotta. Next up, I’m working on “harvesting” indigenous microorganisms (IMO) and making a botanical pesticidal and antifungal concoction, in the style of Korean natural farming (KNF). Sorry if I’m boring you; this is all quite exciting tome and I look forward to learning more!