It's amazing what a different twelve days can make to a compost pile. I suspect the chicken manure was largely responsible for the fast heating and the equally fast slumping in this case. No matter what the cause, by the time our most recent cold spell hit, the pile was no longer breathing out visible hot air and it had also lost about a third of its bulk. Time to regroup a little bit.

I didn't exactly turn the pile. Instead, I forked up some of the outer perimeter that had sunk down to below critical mass for composting. Now the pile is about as tall as it was before once again, but it's more pyramidal and considerably smaller in total volume. I'll be curious to see if it heats up again or just slow cooks for the rest of the winter.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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