From left: garbanzo beans, corn, sunflowers, black eyed peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash and potatoes at Rancho Pillow. I just top dressed the corn and beans with fresh Silva Star Farm chicken manure.

I’ve been experimenting with using fresh chicken manure on veggies, and the results have been remarkable. In the past I have only used composted manure, but I am now convinced that fresh manure is just as useful, if not more so. Providing enough nitrogen to veggies is difficult when farming organically. Fresh manure is full of available nitrogen, a nutrient which escapes quickly into the atmosphere when manure is exposed to light and air. This season I have limited my application of fresh manure to heavy feeding crops like corn, which is also a crop that has no direct contact with the soil (never spread fresh manure on salad greens).

For the past 5 months we have had 300 chickens moving around Rancho Pillow in a 30ft eggstream trailer. Unfortunately, our proximity to Atascadero creek meant that predator attacks were frequent, despite electric fencing. We believe a family of foxes was digging under the fences and massacring up to 12 chickens at a time. Sarah Silva estimates she lost 80 chickens to predators since last March. It’s safe to say those are some well fed foxes!

At Felton Acres, we have access to manure that is mixed with pine shavings in the 2 Brooder Rooms. Both were filled with about 2 and a half feet of manure, which we spread in the lower field around rows of corn and squash. Pine shavings and manure are both acidic, so I spread plenty of oyster shells to balance the PH. The corn an squash have been growing rapidly, and lots of tomatoes have volunteered from last year’s seeds.

Corn and winter squash growing at Felton Acres in the pasture where we spread manure from the Brooder Rooms.