a rich solution to a stinky problem

This E-Sheet(R) is provided as confirmation that the ad appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date and page indicated. You may not create derivative works, or in any way exploit or repurpose any content.
Publication Date: 03/04/2012
Ad Number:
Insertion Number:
Size:
Color Type:
Client Name:
Advertiser:
Section/Page/Zone: Gracious Living/F003/
Description:
GARDEN PROJECTS JUST IN TIME FOR SPRING
Look for “Handmade Garden Projects: Step-by-Step Instructions for
Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting & More” by Lorene
Edwards Forkner. Timber Press. $19.95.
Learn about Personalizing outdoor spaces with found, crafted or
repurposed items. For a trellis: Use an old step ladder, build a bamboo
obelisk, turn a dead tree upside down.
Do Plant a mini-knot garden in a pot. Turn a birdbath into a planter.
Don’t Miss the vintage chandelier that’s crafted from wire edging fence,
wire, glass porch light covers, cut-glass crystals and votive candles.
grow
– Krys Stefansky, The Virginian-Pilot
Sunday | 03.04.12 | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT | PAGE 3
CHICKENS, SEEDS,
SO MUCH MORE
Virginia Beach Seed & Poultry
Swap is set for Saturday
at new Pungo farm stand
By Mary Reid Barrow
Correspondent
VIRGINIA BEACH
BILL TIERNAN PHOTOS | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Brian and Anna Smith built a system on their farm near Camden, N.C., to turn their horses’
manure into compost that they sell to farmers and gardeners.
COMPOST
A RICH SOLUTION
TO A STINKY PROBLEM
Continued from Page 1
“
We saw a
business
thing there
and a good
investment.”
Brian Smith
want to
try it?
For information
on the
O2Compost
system, write
O2Compost,
Price-Moon
Enterprises,
P.O. Box 1026,
Snohomish, WA
98291,
or go to www.
o2compost.
com. 360-5688085.
system sized to process the amount
of manure generated by the six horses then on the property.
“It wasn’t cheap,” Brian said.
But it is simple. A blower forces
air through 3-inch PVC pipes that
extend behind and underneath the
trio of 12-by-12-foot bins.
One bin accumulates fresh manure. Twice each hour for 30 seconds
a fan forces air into the bottom of the
second pile, already filled. The third
pile, in a further stage of decomposition, sits and cures. On a cold day,
the manure sends up whiffs of steam.
Monitoring follows Environmental
Protection Agency standards and assures that pile temperatures destroy
pathogens, weed seeds and – evidently – horse manure’s usual odor. Brian gauges progress by periodically
stabbing the composting piles with
an enormous thermometer, keeping
records required by the North Carolina Department of Environmental
Resources.
With this rotating system, one bin
receives fresh manure mixed with
used pine-pellet bedding, along with
green kitchen waste generated by
the couple and Anna’s parents, who
live next door in the house where
she grew up.
The two remaining bins simply
“cook.”
The wood pellets Anna uses in the
stalls help speed decomposition and
give the mix the good carbon-to-nitrogen ratio important to gardeners.
There’s no pile turning. Manure is
handled just twice – once going into
an empty bin and once, as compost,
going out.
When the first rich, dark compost
was ready 90 days after they first began, the Smiths gave it away to delighted friends and family, then sold it
by the truckload. Brian rigged a Bush
Hog to mince the monthly batches of
compost into the lightweight, evenly textured consistency that camouflages its true origins.
“People don’t like to see the lumps,”
he said.
After a couple of years, the West
Coast composting system paid for
itself. And, last year, it paid for a
small tractor.
For them – those gardeners presumably a little weak in the back – besides filling substantial and perhaps
challenging 44-quart sacks, Brian
bags compost in resealable, handled, easily carried, 16-quart bags.
He also packages lunch-bag-sized
paper sacks with four 4-oz compost
“tea bags.” Compost tea is for patio
gardeners looking to give their plants
a drink of water with a little kick.
Making the circuit of garden shows
to market their product, in January at
The Virginia Flower & Garden Expo
in Virginia Beach, Brian and Anna
Smith caught the attention of Dave
Dubinsky, owner of Jack Frost Landscapes & Garden Center. Dubinsky
placed an order for Carolina Compost
to arrive in his Virginia Beach shop
by March, at the start of the gardening season.
Not a minute too soon, he figured.
“I wanted to jump on it before anybody else did,” Dubinsky said. Organic products are the trend in gardening, he said, and the reason he carries
organic leaf compost, organic mushroom compost and an organic product
line from California called Dr. Earth.
In our area, Dubinsky said, gardeners are increasingly concerned
about what effect their gardening
has on the Chesapeake Bay. More
and more, he said, they want to be
environmentally friendly and avoid
chemicals.
Carolina Compost also appealed
to him as an independent garden
center owner trying to set itself
apart from the inventory of large
chain retailers.
For Brian, the headache of the
manure is over. In fact, the more
the horses make, the better. Every
day, their work continues.
Hightower, Anna’s 18-hand high
Belgian draft horse, is the big producer and received an honor: His
sturdy likeness became the Carolina Compost company logo.
“He weighs 1,700 pounds and
probably poops more than 50 pounds
a day.” Anna said, laughing.
Lexie, her Thoroughbred and the
former racehorse for whom the
farm is named, comes in second in
the manure-making department.
Then there’s Rebel, a quarterhorse
and boarder.
Lastly in terms of manure produced, is a petite pony Anna recently bought for Addie, the couple’s
7-month-old daughter.
The shaggy little Shetland, with
years to go until Addie is old enough
to ride, is named Banks.
“He makes the little bags,” Anna
joked.
Right around Camden, people still
order the compost by the truckload.
But Brian wants to spread the byproduct of Anna’s horses to a broader market.
“I think our clientele is more the
older, retired, gardener person,” Brian said, adding that the green movement encourages gardeners to find
natural products with which to fer- Krys Stefansky, 757-446-2043, krys.
tilize and amend their soil.
[email protected]
Brian Smith
dumps
manure into
a bin to start
the process
of turning the
horse waste
into compost.
The Smiths’
system is
designed so
the manure
piles don’t
need to be
turned.
Hey, city slickers!
If you’re yearning for a little country, head
down to Back Bay Botanicals in the Pungo
area of Virginia Beach Saturday for a taste
of the bucolic life.
Owner Gina Lynch will see that you head
home, dreaming of spring, with new plants,
perhaps some fresh eggs in your sack and
maybe even a few chickens.
It’s Lynch’s Virginia Beach Seed & Poultry Swap from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday,
rain or shine.
The event is free and takes place in and
around the new farm stand on Muddy Creek
Road, adjacent to her pick-your-own flower and herb beds and where her free-range
chickens often feed.
Take some of the seeds you collected from
flowers or veggies last year, or bring cuttings from, say, hydrangeas or roses, divisions of some of your perennials, bulbs you
have thinned or even early seedlings you
have started.
Swap what you have with other participants’ bounty from their land.
Lynch has even made up colorful packets of her own seeds – dill, zinnia and sunflower – that she collected last year from
her prolific summer pick-your-own garden.
“Heirloom seeds are best because they
will be true to what they were originally,”
Lynch said. “With hybrids you can’t tell.”
If you raise chickens, bring your extra
roosters or hens and swap with other chicken lovers in attendance.
And if you want to raise chickens, but live
in the northern half of Virginia Beach where
zoning laws won’t allow it, Lynch will have
a petition on hand that you can sign. It will
request a change in zoning so that residents
can keep hens in their yards.
Wait until you see Lynch’s colorful eggs
she has for sale under the label “Just Got
Laid in Pungo.” The sight of the blue-green,
brown and chocolate eggs will make you
want to buy a dozen.
As part of the seed-and-chicken swap,
Lynch also will have Heritage breed chickens and laying hens for sale to help you get
started.
And if you like the idea of having chickens, but really don’t want to go to the trouble, Lynch has a Rent-A-Chick program in
which you and the kids can participate for
a couple of weeks. For $60 she will send you
home with baby chickens, instructions and
everything you need to raise the chicks for
a week or two. Then bring them back to the
farm; Lynch takes care of the rest.
Lynch, who was a biology major at Old
MARY REID BARROW | FOR THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
want to go?
What Virginia Beach Seed & Poultry Swap
Where Back Bay Botanicals, 1549 N. Muddy
Creek Road, Virginia Beach
When 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Details Bring seeds, cuttings, divisions,
bulbs and seedlings to share. Bring chickens
to swap, too. Rent-A-Chick. Buy eggs. Sign
a petition to allow folks to raise hens in the
northern half of Virginia Beach.
Info Contact Gina Lynch (pictured above
with one of her roosters), 757-560-1455,
[email protected] or www.
backbaybotanicals.blogspot.com.
Dominion University, works full time at
her parents’ business, Lynch Insurance,
in Virginia Beach. She is renovating the
100-year-old farmhouse on Muddy Creek
Road that her parents owned into a bedand-breakfast inn.
The 31-year-old hopes the B&B, along
with sales of her flowers, herbs, chickens
and eggs, will allow her to be a full-time
farm girl before too long.
She started three years ago, first with
chickens, then she opened her pick-yourown farm for herbs and flowers. She held
her first seed-and-chicken swap last year
and 40 people came from as far as way as
Williamsburg and Yorktown to the swap. She
is hoping for many more this year.
“It’s just fun to network with other gardeners,” Lynch said. “And chickens are the
gateway drugs of farming!”
Mary Reid Barrow, [email protected]
AN ODE TO A
HUMBLE PARTNER:
THE GARDEN CART
By Lee Reich
The Associated Press
Let us now praise an unsung hero of the garden: the
humble garden cart.
My cart has played a fundamental role in the pleasures that a garden offers to
eyes, nose and mouth.
Let’s first be clear on just
what implement I’m talking
about. A garden cart is not
a wheelbarrow. Instead of
having a single, squat tire, a
garden cart has a large body
boxed in by wood, sometimes
aluminum, flanked by two
heavy-duty bicycle-size tires.
The tires’ size and the
fact that they’re centered
along the wooden bed make
a garden cart useful in a different way than a wheelbarrow. This cart lets you
move a much heavier load
– up to 400 pounds if it’s a
high-quality cart. That’s because the large wheels move
smoothly over bumps and
carry most of the weight.
With a garden cart, you
mostly just pull the weight,
in contrast to a wheelbarrow, which requires you to
lift and push. My cart has
been indispensable in moving rocks over the years.
The large, high-walled
bed of the cart also makes
it possible to haul around
oodles of bulky materials.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO
A friend praises his cart
for being able to move, in
one trip, four large bales of
hay from his storage area
to his horses.
My garden thanks the cart
for the enormous quantities
of organic materials hauled
over to it. Some, such as compost, are heavy, and others,
such as leaves, are bulky.
Quantities of organic materials are what make great
soils, and great soils are the
foundation of great gardens,
whether vegetable gardens,
traditional flower gardens
or stately or fruitful trees.
Year after year, for almost
two decades, my cart has
hauled the mowings from a
1-acre hayfield to be turned
into compost or laid around
trees and berries as mulch.
Year after year, large piles
of wood chips have been
moved, too, one cartload at
a time, from my driveway,
where arborists conveniently dump truckloads of chips,
back to my garden for mulch
or for paths.
Autumn leaves, bagged
and discarded by neighbors, likewise have bumped
along in the wooden bed to
their eventual home beneath
trees or in the compost pile.
The cart has occasionally
moved plants and soil. Regularly, usually at this time of
year, the cart rolls finished
compost from compost bins
over to beds to be put down
as an inch-thick icing.
This year brought renewed appreciation for
my garden cart because
the wooden bed had finally reached such a state of
disrepair. Every shovelful
of compost was also taking
along layers of soon-disappearing plywood. After two
days of measuring and dismantling, I replaced the old
plywood with new.
No need to become annoyed at a garden cart when
it reaches a state of disrepair. After all, mine, for
example, had by that time
hauled tons and tons of materials. It had stood the
abuse of spending most of
its life outdoors, exposed
to rain, snow, heat and cold.
In summary, any garden
would be improved by a garden cart, and be sure to get a
high-quality one. Look especially for sturdy wheels and
a large bed of high-quality
plywood.