{"id":4272,"date":"2015-02-02T19:43:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T19:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/?p=4272"},"modified":"2015-02-02T19:43:26","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T19:43:26","slug":"farm-focus-juicing-our-compost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/farm-focus-juicing-our-compost\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Focus: Juicing Our Compost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1117\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In our ongoing work to use on farm resources to enhance the health of our\u00a0orchard and the sustainability of our operations we have embarked on a new\u00a0system for feeding our compost. We are juicing it!<\/p>\n

In the summer when stone fruit is abundant, we freeze much of the harvest for\u00a0making conserves later in the year. The fruit is minimally processed - we clean\u00a0it, cut it and then store it in 5 gallon buckets. When fruit is taken out of freezer\u00a0we thaw, the solids separate from the liquids in the fruit and we end up with a\u00a0lot of extra juice. We estimate we produce about 100 gallons a week, or 5,200\u00a0gallons of juice a year!<\/p>\nCurrently, we are in the brainstorming phase of coming up with a concept for\u00a0how we can turn the juice into a delicious edible product. Fruit vinegars, kombuchas, sodas, and more are under discussion.\n\nIn the meantime, we are putting all that juice to good work in our compost\u00a0piles! Once the juice comes out of the kitchen, it is stored in 275 gallon vats.\u00a0When it is time to apply it to the compost we put the juice into a big 1,100\u00a0gallon tank and mix it with water. The water tank and a machine that simultaneously turns and waters the compost is attached to the tractor. The machine\u00a0moves over top of the long rows of compost and turns and waters as it goes. We\u00a0apply juice to the piles once every couple of weeks.\n\nAdding juice to our compost speeds up the decomposition process in our piles.\u00a0The bacteria in the piles love sugars. The bacteria go into overtime to consume\u00a0the sugars which increases the metabolic activity in our piles so our compost is\u00a0processed faster. Juicing the compost is particularly useful in the winter when\u00a0ambient temperatures are cooler.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our ongoing work to use on farm resources to enhance the health of our\u00a0orchard and the sustainability of our operations we have embarked on a new\u00a0system for feeding our compost. We are juicing it! In the summer when stone fruit is abundant, we freeze much of the harvest for\u00a0making conserves later in the year. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1117.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-16U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}