The AikiHomestead
Our Lifestyle Blog as We Create a Homestead in Northern Ontario
Trying Something Different with the Humanure Hacienda
2022-07-12
So I'm getting old and cranky and tired of doing stuff over and over again that's not always so pleasant. Fall mucking out of the previous year's humanure is one of those tasks.I've noticed that over the course of a year or more as it dehydrates though, it shrinks down significantly.
Also, the place where we're dumping it is on the edge of our normal habitable zone, and has room itself for decades and decades and decades of humanure piled under sawdust.
With that in mind, I've decided to try to rethink the hacienda into something that can be left to its own devices over time.
I hammered in several fence posts in a triangular fashion, covered them with a little bit of light netting, and then draped some large pieces of cardboard over that. I figure that the cardboard is pretty environmentally friendly/neutral, and that I could just add on other triangular sections over the decades, forming a hexagon, and then continue on the same way well into my great, great grandchildren's age.
I still need to add more cardboard to enclose the whole area, but for now I can already start dumping into it, and anticipate that it would be many years before it were to be filled. I'll perhaps set up a secondary triangle before year's end as an emergency overflow, but at this rate, it's hardly needed.
