Our compost program started from our first year when we traded hay that we cut for manure with a neighbor farm.  We moved the manure to our fields and didn’t do much to it until it had rotted down and we could spread it on the fields before planting the winter crops.  But this was not the right approach and we knew we had to improve our compost and actually develop a program around it.  We invested heavily in this in 2020.

We searched for guidance through a company called Compostwerks! here in the Hudson Valley.  Compostwerks! was started by the original farm manager at what is now the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, the Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, NY.  Before the Center was realized, and before Dan Barber opened the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Stone Barns was a piece of property in search of a use and a meaning.  The Rockefeller family hired Gregg Twehues, who had been a row-crop farmer in the Hudson Valley for several years.  They charged him with designing and operating an integrated, sustainable farming program at Stone Barns that would produce everything from row crops, fruits and vegetables to fowl, lamb and beef.  Gregg quickly realized that the manure from the cows needed a use, because they were paying too much to have it hauled away.  This led him to develop an intensive compost program at Stone Barns that utilized manure and agricultural waste.

Gregg made his first visit to Branchwater in the summer of 2020 to understand our vision and show us how a better compost program could help our row crops. This has required us to learn a lot more about soil health, soil structure and microorganisms than we ever thought we’d need to know.  But we are building a better compost now.  First, we needed more carbon in our manure, since most of it was coming from horse manure and not from cows.  We did this by adding wood chips from trees that had come down on the farm in thunderstorms.  Second, we are integrating several organically certified additions to the compost: humic acid to aid soil structure and increase fertility; oat flour to help nourish fungi; azomite rock dust that contains metabolically active minerals and trace elements needed for plant growth; alfalfa meal to increase biological activity; kelp meal and seaweed extract as a natural fertilizer; and molasses as food for bacteria.

We’ve also changed the orientation and size of the compost to be lower, longer rows instead of big mounds to aid in their breakdown.  Once the compost is complete, we have a 350 gallon compost brewer to rapidly multiple the microorganisms by pumping oxygen into water containing 5 gallons of compost.  This compost tea will then be sprayed on the fields and crops in the spring as the winter crops start to grow and after harvest.