Those are 5' shovels for scale.The pile on the right is what I'm potting in. It's got some silt from the river bottoms and been sweetened with wood ash. it's 2 years old. The pile on the left is straight cow manure (with straw bedding) that's 1 year old. It'll be topdressing for the garden and orchard. The pile in the back is fresh. It came from a shed the neighbor has been feeding up calves in. He has some cows nursing calves in the barn, so I'll get that much again when he moves them out. Then he'll put in some mares till they foal, on fresh sawdust bedding. So that pile will be about 3 times larger in a couple of months, and will cook down to the size of the one on the left by this time next year.
My poor beat up old trailer is below. It has an 18' bed. I have been known to empty it with a shovel... several times while cleaning a big barn. Any more I'll only do a barn that's close enough that I can drive the tractor back and forth so I can use the loader for both loading and unloading. I've come a long way from composting kitchen scraps in one of those rotating barrels.
