"Dan L" wrote in message
...
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

It's a question most gardeners I know grapple with Bill. I live in
the
country and the garden on this farm has been made on the side of a
stoney
slope. Farmers don't put their houses on good soil, they put it on
the
shitty stuff because income comes from the good soil.

The unimproved soil was appalling - dunno how to describe it but it's
the
colour of the poo a calf with the scours produces - yellow, unhealthy
looking stuff - it's full of small rocks quartz and shale/mudstone.

Everything I need for the garden except animal poop has to be brought
in,
but to get some of the animal poop eg, the chook poop, I need food for
the
chooks to be brought in. I have to hunt the plops the cattle leave
all over
the paddocks.

I recycle and return to the soil as much as I can but all rose
prunings go
to the tip and in spring when I'm overwhelmed with giant weeds, some
of
those go to the tip too as I can't get to them before they get seed
heads
and I can never make and turn a hot compost. My compost tends to be
more
weed piles that rot over time. I'm better at tumble compost bins.
Dead
chhoks get buried in the bottom of these weed piles.

Why can't you make a hot compost pile?
Sounds like you have a farm. If you have a tractor with a front loader,
you can easily turn a large hot compost open pile.

Our tractor doesn't have a front end loader - it has pallet prongs. And I'm
too old and feeble to turn it by hand. I've decided not to sweat the small
stuff. My piles eventutally rot and forms a decent looking humus so I use
what i do get.