Archive for September, 2009
How Much Manure Does A Pig Make
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food on September 25th, 2009
In my previous post on composting pig manure, I discussed the type of composting system Issa and I plan to use. A fundamental question for us in choosing a system was how much manure we could expect our forthcoming pigs to make. A system based on 55 gallon drums would be a hassle if the pigs could fill them in too short a time.
Issa found one site that stated that a 200 lb pig would produce about 13 lbs of manure a day. That’s all well and good, but unless you know the density of pig manure, it doesn’t tell you the volume you’ll need to contain it.
I found a site that stated that pigs would produce between 0.5 and 0.75 cubic feet of manure a day, per 1000 lbs of pig. For a 200 lb pig (close to market weight), that’s 0.1 to 0.15 cubic feet of manure. That gives us a density of about 87 to 130 lbs per cubic foot, or an average density of about 108 lbs per cubic foot.
A 55 gallon drum is about 7.3 cubic feet. If a 200 lb pig produces 0.1 to 0.15 cubic feet of manure a day, it will fill a 55 gallon drum in between 73 and 49 days. We plan to keep two pigs, so cut those numbers in half: 36.5 and 24.5 days. Granted, those numbers are for full-weight pigs. The pigs will produce less manure when they are smaller.
A 4-H site I found said that a healthy pig will gain approximately 1.6 lbs per day. According to that site, 50 lbs is a typical starter weight. Market weight is between 200 and 250 lbs. Based on the previously-given numbers, here’s a graph of the estimated total manure production of a pig from 50 lbs to 250 lbs:
The red line is the high estimate, based on 0.75 cubic feet of manure per 1000 lbs of pig, while the blue line is the low estimate, based on 0.5 cubic feet of manure per 1000 lbs of pig. You can see we end up with approximately 9 to 14 cubic feet of manure produced per pig. (For perspective, again, a 55 gallon drum is about 7.3 cubic feet.) This is estimated to weigh approximately 972 to 1512 lbs.
Here’s where things get a bit fuzzy. That manure is going to shrink down when it composts. A typical ratio given for compost shrinkage is 50% volume. That means we can expect to end up with approximately 4.5 to 7 cubic feet of compost, solely from pig manure. Bulk finished compost is estimated to weigh in the ball park of 800 lbs per cubic yard, or 30 lbs per cubic foot. That means our final compost will weigh only 135 to 210 lbs! That’s a heck of a lot of matter that left the system!
Realistically, though, the pig manure will not be the only input to the system. Pig manure has a high nitrogen content relative to carbon. This means that an appropriate quantity of high-carbon material must be added out to balance out the ratio in the final compost. The actual amount of material depends on the type of material added, and a consideration of this factor is beyond the scope of this post. The bottom line is that there’s going to be a bit more compost than the pig manure alone would produce.
The final question, then, is whether the two pigs we plan to keep will provide enough compost to fertilize the garden plot we plan to keep. I have estimated that the garden will start out at about 350 square feet and will probably grow from there. A common guideline is to till 1″ of compost over your entire garden. Based on this, a 350 square foot plot will require just about exactly 1 cubic foot of compost. Yeah, looks like we’re good to go, with compost to spare!
I have some water jugs that are almost exactly 1 cubic square foot. It’s hard to imagine that small amount of compost going over 350 square feet! Maybe it’s more compost than it looks like, though. After all, it’s certainly more water than it looks like!
Actual results will, of course, vary, but it’s still a fun thought exercise.
Compost Bin Designs
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food on September 25th, 2009
One of the projects that goes along with the new house is choosing and building a new composting system. Currently, we compost kitchen scraps in a large, outdoor trash can. Issa drilled holes in the side for aeration, and she knocks it over and rolls it around now and then for turning.
After about six months of this, we have approximately half-filled one of the cans. But we plan to raise a pig or two at the new place, and pigs generate a lot of manure. Manure makes great compost. Some folks say you shouldn’t put animal manure compost onto edible plants, but other folks do it, and all things considered, we’re going to go ahead and do it. After all, what the hell else are we going to do with that much manure? Seems a shame to waste it.
I figure any risk of contamination can be reduced if we make sure the stuff is fully composted and dig the material into the beds in the fall, giving any contaminants the entire winter to… well, I don’t know. But it seems like a better idea than, say, top-dressing the beds while the live plants are present. Which we may end up doing as well, depending on various factors. But it just doesn’t seem to make sense to keep kitchen scraps in a separate pile from the manure, especially when the smart thing to do is probably to feed the kitchen scraps to the pigs, and then compost the resulting manure, as opposed to throwing the scraps straight into the bin, denying the pigs any nutritional value that might be gained.
Anyway, we are considering our preferred way of composting all the manure, yard clippings, and so forth that the property is likely to produce.
Now a good old pile on the ground has simplicity and cheapness going for it, but we’d prefer something a bit more contained, both to clearly delineate one pile from another (when they’re at different stages of processing), and to keep it from attracting unwanted pests.
You can find plans on-line for multi-bin units like the one pictured above, and they’re not too difficult to build, but definitely a bit time-consuming and requires purchasing a few hundred dollars in lumber, or sourcing it scrap.
Isn’t it nice, then, that you can build pretty much the same damn thing using cheap-to-free shipping pallets? Doesn’t look quite as snazzy, but given that it’s designed to hold rotting trash, maybe that’s not actually such a big deal.
Ah, but you still have to turn the damn thing, right? This is typically done by shoveling the contents of one bin into the next, empty bin. One bin is kept empty for this purpose. Alternatively, you can turn the contents in-place, which is more work and less effective. Alternatively, you can not bother turning it, but this dramatically slows the composting process.
Commercial compost bins like the one pictured above often have a tumbling mechanism, to ease turning of the compost. These produce compost the fastest and with the least work, but they can be very expensive. A 55-gallon unit like shown above might cost around $200.
So why not build your own on the cheap using a 55-gallon drum? This is currently our leading choice, although we plan to build a vertical tumbler instead of a horizontal one. A vertical one can have the opening at the end, which should be structurally more sound and easier to engineer than an opening at the wall. Also, a vertical one can easily be built to pour out into a wheelbarrow. The narrower design will allow more compost volume for a similar axis of axle, meaning that a 10′ length of galvanized steel conduit might support three barrels instead of two (not sure if the math actually works out on that one). Additionally, the vertical tumbling will produce more motion in the compost, hopefully speeding the process up.
We’re leaning towards something like this:
Additional barrels could be added by simply extending the design to the sides.
Here are links to the instructions for building the two homemade composters shown:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler-2/
http://www.instructables.com/id/compost-bin/
For bonus, here’s another clever design that simply lays the drum down on scooter-wheels. This method avoids all necessity of installing an axle, although it loses the ability to get a wheel-barrow up underneath your bin for easy emptying.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler/
Jig-A-Loo Lubricant
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Uncategorized on September 25th, 2009
I recently had the opportunity to use two different lubricants from Jig-A-Loo. I hadn’t heard about this company before and wanted to share my results with you (no, I’m not a shill, just excited about this product).
Jig-A-Loo silicon lubricant is the absolute slickest lube I’ve ever used. It’s more expensive than, say, WD-40, with $5 getting you 10.9 oz of Jig-A-Loo and 16 oz of WD-40, but this stuff is incredible when it comes to lubricating. Goes on dry, clear (doesn’t stain), and, did I mention, really amazingly slick?
I first heard about Jig-A-Loo because it’s one of the preferred lubricants for Rubik’s cubes. I accidentally bought their Extreme Graphite product first. Because graphite can handle extreme temperatures (-99 to about +1000 degrees), this product is ideal for applications like automobile engines. Not so much Rubik’s cubes. I shot the stuff into my cube and it immediately got all sticky. I think this might be because the graphite is suspended in an adhesive medium that allows it to stick to the surface to be lubricated. I kept turning the cube and it loosened up pretty quickly. If I had it to do over again, I would lay out the parts to be lubed, cover any surfaces that didn’t need lubing, or that I didn’t want to stain (see below), and spray a light coat over it from a distance of 8-10 inches, per instructions. The typical technique of just squirting the stuff into whatever you’re lubing and then turning the gears to work the lube in doesn’t seem to work with the Extreme Graphite product.
What seemed to happen is that it coated the surfaces it was applied to with a layer of graphite. Once the stickiness wore out, it was actually pretty slick, but it didn’t seem to work nearly as well as the silicon version. I guess if I needed an extreme-temperature lube, I would use it again, but not so much otherwise. Additionally, the graphite coating was more or less permanent. I had to scrape at it with a fingernail to get it to come off. For some applications, this would be great, but I would never put it on, say a firearm, because I wouldn’t be comfortable with my options for removing it if I decided I didn’t like it.
Additionally, I should point out that the graphite lube stains anything it touches black. Graphite, I’m guessing. So be careful when applying. This stuff is still worlds better than powdered graphite, because at least it stayed in place where I put it.
Jig10.9OZ Spr Lubricant
Gardening Options
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food on September 17th, 2009
I’ve been working on planning my garden for next year. Now that we’ve closed on the Knoxville house, I expect to have lots more room to do up a garden proper. Or get in way over my head. Either way, I’ll be smiling.
Like any good geek, I started with a spreadsheet. Plants down the Y-axis and weeks of the year along the X-axis. Week zero is the estimated last-frost date for my region, and weeks are numbered plus/minus from there. The nice thing about this is that, if my zone changes, I can easily modify week zero and the other weeks will update.
I indicates that I start the plant indoors. G is the estimated germination. Green squares indicate that the plant is growing indoors as a starter. X is estimated transplant date. Yellow squares indicate that the plant is growing outdoors.
If you are interested in viewing this spreadsheet, you can do so at this link. For any gardeners who are reading, your feedback is welcome.
For most of the plants, I have identified a specific Seeds of Change item number that I will order, and I took the estimated dates from those items. I realize that this is an insane amount of detail, and actual results may vary, but I had so many things that I was planning to plant that I really needed some tool to get my head around them, or I would have absolutely no idea what to plant when.
Left of the plant names, I have columns that indicate the Seeds of Change item number, so I can easily compile an order later in the year. I’ve also estimated the number of plants I want to grow, recorded the recommended spacing, and then calculated the total square footage that will be required.
Based on that square footage, I estimate that I will need about ten 4′x8′ beds to hold all these plants, or the equivalent (4′x8′ is just a common size for a raised bed). I had originally planned to use raised beds, because they are similar to the container gardening that I have done until now, and they present various advantages, but they may turn out to be cost-prohibitive on this scale.
By my calculations, I could build five 16×4 raised beds using 2x12x16 boards for a cost of about $600. That breaks down to about $300 for lumber and $300 for 12 cubic yards of screened topsoil. That’s for treated pine boards (set aside, for the moment, the debate about whether it’s safe to use treated lumber in raised beds). Even treated boards will wear out and need replacing eventually if they are in contact with the soil, at considerable labor.
I found a design online at the Noble Foundation for corrugated sheet metal beds with rebar reinforcing. These would last essentially indefinitely, but would run about $800 including the soil. Even more expensive!
Given that it looks like raised beds will cost me $600-$800 right off the bat, I think I’m going to just see what I can do with the good old dirt that’s in my front yard. That’s too much money to spend on solving problems that I might not even have. I can always add raised beds later if I have poor results.
Taurus Judge: Not For Self-Defense
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Self-Defense on September 14th, 2009
The Taurus Judge is a revolver that can fire both .45 Long Colt cartridges and .410 gauge shotshells. This fine trick makes it a wonderfully versatile gun, perfect for certain jobs, but not for self-defense.
In one ad, Taurus shows two silhouette targets side-by-side. One has been punctured with six neat .45 holes. The other has a great gaping hole blasted into it by six .410 birdshot shells. “You Choose,” the ad suggests. And every time, I would grit my teeth and roll my eyes, until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Birdshot is for birds. And maybe snakes. But not for larger predators like people. Oh, it’ll blow the hell out of a paper target, but birdshot has never penetrated particularly well on people, even when fired from a shotgun’s full-length barrel. Coming out of a tiny revolver barrel, the velocity, and therefore penetration, is dramatically reduced. The Box O’ Truth estimated that .410 birdshot penetration in flesh would be less than 2″. When fired into a plastic 2-liter cola bottle full of water, most of the shot didn’t even penetrate the back-side of the bottle. And when it comes to stopping an attack, penetration of the projectile to damage vital organs is key. Not that I’m volunteering to get shot by a Judge, but if someone was trying to kill me, I’d like a little more certainty. You shoot someone with 2″ of penetration, and maybe they will decide to stop attacking you. You get enough penetration to damage a major blood vessel or organ, and they will eventually stop whether they want to or not.
What about buckshot? You can get .410 shells loaded with 3 #00 balls. The Box O’ Truth found that these rounds would penetrate about 4.5″ in flesh, well short of the FBI’s desired 12″. Additionally, the rounds were squashed flat from pressing against each other in the barrel, which is not conducive to accuracy.
In fact, the only round that penetrated sufficiently from the Judge to be useful for defense was the .45 Long Colt. No surprise. There’s a reason that birdshot is shot (at birds) out of shotguns, buckshot out of shotguns, and bullets out of revolvers and pistols.
Buy a Judge if you want to, but don’t be fooled by Taurus’s marketing. .410 birdshot may blow the hell out of a piece of paper, but it’s not appropriate for self-defense.
-
-
You are currently browsing the archives for September, 2009
Love Live Grow- Soft February 5, 2012Keep Reading […]
- Baby in the Sunshine February 4, 2012Keep Reading […]
- Paycheck February 1, 2012The thing I am most excited about lately is blogging. I’ve been writing online for… about 7 years now. I started out on LJ, wrote a thing or two for Associated Content, and kept starting blogs every time a new idea popped into my head. I have started so many blogs and owned so many domain names over those years! LoveLiveGrow has been around for a couple of y […]
- Soft February 5, 2012
