How we dealt with 50tonnes of Unfinished Compost

July 2021

When we moved here earlier this year, we knew that one of our priorities was obtaining some compost. If we have learnt one thing since we arrived in France, it’s that “just buying some …..” (replace the dots with anything) is not necessarily that easy.

My automatic go to is the WWW. This is where I trawl for days working out how to purchase something. I can spend days searching before I realise that there may be a specific word for this particular item. Once you discover the word, the searching does suddenly become remarkably easier. It might sound like it’s useful to use a dictionary or online translator in these circumstances, which is normally where we start, but you can bet that a nuanced word or phrase is what we need, which neither of those give you. Now Compost is the same word in French and English, but there can be other words used, not to mention we were after organic and we wanted peat free, so a little journey of discovery was required. En vrac is the phrase used here to talk about buying unpackaged items. All the supermarkets offer some produce en vrac, such as rice, pastas, cereals, nuts etc. Many of our searches were coming back with bags of compost that you may buy at the garden centre, but we were looking for several tonnes. Not only did this not make financial sense, the amount of plastic that it would create was not something we were prepared to deal with. Often you can buy a tonne on a crate, but it comes with all the plastic. We were looking for a lorry load, unpackaged.

However, it was suddenly the discovery of the phrase “le big bag” (I kid you not) that enabled me to dig deeper into my search. Ultimately, it was the information that my friend, the olive farmers wife, Anna, gave me months ago that came up with the best option. However, having said that there was not a website, just a phone number and no email address. I actually plucked up the courage to call the number (phone calls in French are still difficult for me), twice in fact, but both times, no-one answered. Further searching lead me to the UK. The company that I was trying to contact in Provence was also a company in the UK. Ah ha! They had an email address, so I emailed them and almost immediately my email was forwarded to the correct person in Provence, who called us and came to visit the farm that same day!! He visited and asked us what our plans were. The minimum order is 25tonnes, which we were comfortable with. We were originally looking for 5 tonnes as we were concerned about cost, but then we had found 10 tonnes online at a suitable price. However, we were suddenly thinking of taking 25 tonnes. The price was really good and it included delivery. It was a fantastic service. however the man said we needed 50 tonnes. Right. OK.

We have the space to keep it, it was not a problem and we know that over time we will use it. It was so exciting. Receiving the compost means that beds can be built and farming can commence. Well, that was the plan…

“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything”. Since moving in to our forever home, we have relied so highly Philip. He is the pool guy, the builder guy, the accountant, the car guy, the gardener guy. He is the one that does everything. Don’t get me wrong, I pull my weight but there is so much which needs to be done at this stage and it’s all on him at the moment. EVERYTHING IS A PRIORITY. It will not always be like this. But for now it is. And things seem to happen which take Phil away from what we need to do. Our sewage system which we had diligently serviced since arriving to avoid future problems, decided to break down. This took him a day to temporarily fix. We have had some stairs taken down from the outside of the house, which left a load of rubble and this has taken a week out of our schedule to clear. It’s done, it’s gone, I’m glad we have done it but perhaps we should have waited until Autumn. We live and learn.

The compost also needed sorting. And fast. But for this we needed Phil. The service from the company delivering our 4 lorries of compost was exceptional. I think the quality of the compost is excellent. They are very proud of all of their processes and their Bio (organic) certification. However, they have essentially delivered to us an unfinished product. It is woody and not broken down and it is hot. Steaming hot when you dig deep. It’s all good, except that time is not on our side. It has been breaking down for 9-12 months at the facility but it needs longer. So this leads us to a big dilemma. I’m not sure if you can picture what 50 tonnes of compost looks like, but it is a considerable amount. It’s about 7-8 elephants. We do not have anything other than a shovel and wheelbarrow to deal with this. In fact we went out and bought the biggest wheelbarrow that we could find - it’s great, apart from the fact that you can’t fill it as it gets too heavy! I was merrily lugging compost in the 35degree heat for days and barely making an impact. Phil spends a day lugging compost and moves tonnes…..this is why we need him!

This is what 3 out of 4 lorries of compost looks like….

By buying all of this compost, we thought we were solving a problem, however, we have ended up with another. We suspected that it may need to be broken down more, before we received it. We follow Charles Dowding avidly and he has done many compost experiments and so we were aware that it may be something we had to think about, but it put us into a bit of a spin as we needed to deal with the compost quickly as we need to get it broken down as quickly as possible and to stop it drying out in the August sun. By dealing with this quickly we knew we had to reduce the pile. We had to make smaller, more manageable piles, which we could care for. We had to find a home for our smaller piles and build systems. We were limited on resources, so we have so far used our stables and we have built a 5 compost system as the stables are currently redundant. We do not have horses and we intend to use the stables for our small holding animals in the future, but as we have not yet embarked on animals, then the space is available. Phil bought some ply wood, with which he has divided what we call the pig sty into 3 large boxes which he has loaded with compost. He has also built 5 compost beds with pallets. I have filled 4 of them and the last one is free space. The idea is to turn the last filled compost into the empty space every week. As the first compost fills the empty space, it leaves another empty space to be filled by the next compost etc etc.

The same day that we realised we had a “problem” I saw an instagram post from someone I follow @notillflowers about receiving “meh” compost. It was with an expert called Ellen Polishuk @plantforprofit - whose, we hadn’t realised at the time, book we have “How to start a Farm”. The podcast had some really useful information which I will share in this blog. It is for people like us who don’t have machinery to help. Just us two, a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Apparently there is such a thing as a compost turner which you can attach to your tractor and turn the compost. I dream of this bit of kit - I think it would be a life saver, but given that we don’t know if we will be dealing with this amount of compost again it’s not an investment that makes sense. In theory we will be producing all of our own compost moving forward, we will certainly have enough produce to compost, but time will tell if it will be enough to sustain us as a farm.

Jennie Love, the host of the podcast runs a no-till, as they call no-dig in the States, flower farm. She had also just received the delivery of her compost and was hoping that by letting it sit for 6-8 weeks she would be good to go for her Autumn planting schedule. The advice she was given by Ellen Polishuk is this. Essentially it is not enough time. For Autumn planting Jennie realised that she should have taken delivery in the Spring. As Ellen said “Time is Free”. Letting it sit and do what is does is great - but the whole point of the podcast is what do you do in this situation when you don’t have time (or a compost turner).

Ellen Polishuk feels that almost no-one has a good source of compost. She feels that starting a dialogue with the people that produce the compost is the best thing we can do to improve the quality. Explain our needs and make it clear what we expect, push a little harder and entice them to produce better.

Investing in our soil is simply the best thing we can do on the farm. We have an abundance of sun, a source of water but we need to create the best soil that we can. It is a living thing and we need to keep it alive and give it the care and attention it deserves. It is only relatively recently that the farming community have acknowledged the importance of the soil. Silly as it may sound. It’s really more of a true understanding of the soil. Up until now farmers have preferred to care for the plant or vegetable planted. One example of this is the drip watering system that so many people use. We are watering the seed, seedling or vegetable directly. We are feeding what we are growing. Sounds good. But what we are failing to do in this situation is keep the surrounding soil alive - it will not thrive and therefore our produce will not be the best it can be. I liken it to what we know about human health and how by feeding our gut with the right foods the rest of our body will thrive and feel great. We have to water the soil, not the plant.

Talking of watering, it is really important to keep your compost moist. There, like most things, is a balance. Soggy compost is no good, but neither is dry compost. The compost will stop composting if it is too dry. Do the squeeze text. If you squeeze it and water drips out it is too wet, if it doesn’t stay together at all it is too dry, if you can create a little ball in your hand, you have it just right. The organisms in your compost need water to work and without water they shut down. You can revive them again. I neglected my piles of compost for a while and they became too dry in the August sun. I ran the hose pipe up there and left it running for a few hours over the four piles and gave them a little turn and hey presto! I have hot compost again. It is forgiving, but best to keep a steady flow of water over your compost. My good friend and gardener in London with years of experience, Nick Osborne confirmed that a steady drip of water over your compost is necessary and will speed up the process of breaking down. We are new here and we do not everything set up in a way that we would like at the moment, so we currently don’t have a watering system to keep it going - it requires me or Phil to lug the 100m hose pipe up to the area and give it a good water. This is quite the job as it’s impossible to empty a 100m hose pipe, so it’s incredibly heavy to move. This comes down to our planning - we now know where we need water to be and can plan to make these processes easier in the future, but for now this is just what we have to do.

Watering your compost is vital

Another important factor in composting is oxygen. We have to introduce oxygen into the compost. This is why you may have heard people talking about “turning” the compost. An ample supply of oxygen is key to it’s success as the decomposer microbes need oxygen for their metabolic functions. Without oxygen some microbes will die and others will shut down. Make sure your pile is a manageable size. We have made our own compost since we arrived and it is perhaps too big. In itself it is not too big, but I can’t turn it well enough, meaning that it’s another job for Phil to do. We have to get in with our wellies on and dig deep and I simply can not do it well enough. The other piles we have created with the bought in compost, and therefore more broken down, are easier to turn. Turning is a simple process. It simply means bringing the sides of the compost into the middle and bringing some of the compost from the bottom up to the top. You just need a pitch fork. The more you turn your compost the quicker it will decompose and become ready to use. Ideally turning it every few days is enough - it is not something that must be done daily.

To be clear we are trying to speed up our composting breaking down and we are trying to create heat and a process called Hot Composting. It is possible to turn your compost less in a process called Cold Composting but for the purposes of this blog we are talking simply about speeding up processes.

We still have an enormous pile of compost to deal with. We think we have separated into their owns piles, about 10tonnes. As soon as the delivery arrived we dealt with what we could, but with everything else going on and the amount of time to takes to move it by hand and wheelbarrow and the amount of pallets we have left, we did what we could and have left the rest. The large compost pile is nice and warm and will be continuing to do what it does. We have covered it in a tarpaulin to keep the sun from drying it out and the rain washing it away, but we still need to do more. There is a special cover that can be bought which is made of spun polyester by Goretex, but I have not been successful in sourcing it in France.

The piles that we have separated are doing really well and are continuing to break down nicely. We monitor them constantly and we keep a compost thermometer in them to check their heat. The thermometer has been a really great investment. It was only a few Euro’s from Amazon and has helped us assess our compost much more easily. The compost piles are breaking down more and look healthy. I’m looking forward to being able to use them in our beds, which is one of our next projects. We will keep an eye on how the compost is breaking down and how it is performing when we build our beds and keep you updated as we go.