Hügelkultur Raised Beds

[Molpet]

If the bucket was too big and too heavy for a riding mower, it would just do a nose dive and the back wheels would lift up off the ground.

Need weight on my tractor too. It came with a weight box that hooks up to the 3 pt hitch. But I have a bagger that weighs enough so I don't have any problems.
They make wheel weights also

 

[gtaus]

I still am thinking about getting a front end loader bucket for my riding mower(s)...

Something like that would be nice for me. Probably all I would need in reality. Nobody sells them where I live, so it's just online research at this time.

I encouraged myself to look into a front end bucket for my riding mower. I found a good article on the "scoop" kits. The manual kits start at around $1,000.00 and go up from there for the ones using cables. That's a bit more than I want to spend.

Well, that and I found out that the scoops are rated for only 200 pounds max bucket fill weight and only have a 7 inch lift. That was a bit disappointing to learn. I thought they could do more than that.

I have a couple of 7- and 10-cubic foot Gorilla carts (actually a different brand but the same thing) and they hold 1,200 pounds and 1,500 pounds respectively. If I have a heavy load, I can attach the handle to the riding mower and tow it wherever I need. I guess I'll be sticking with that system.

I fill my hügelkultur raised beds with a mix of topsoil and chicken run compost. The only "hard" work I do is forking out and loading up the compost in the run into my Gorilla cart and pulling the full cart back out of the run. I looked into maybe making a conveyor belt system that would move the compost from inside the run, up and over the chicken run fence, and drop it into a Gorilla cart. That would make compost removal a bit easier, but, alas, I have yet to find a good DIY conveyor belt plan and buying a commercial conveyor belt is way too expensive.

I should still have a few good years in me to do the job manually with my pitchforks, shovels, and Gorilla carts. But there may come a day when I will need more help moving that compost. I have learned to think ahead on some of my hobbies to find solutions that allow me to continue to enjoy them as I get older. I just have not found a better solution to moving compost yet.

I still like to talk about my cement mixer compost sifter that I use to sift my chicken run compost. Here is my setup...

I converted that cement mixer to sift compost before the COVID-19 pandemic. When I did the math way back then, I was making over $60.00 of finished, sifted compost per hour, even at my slow pace. I bet the cost of compost has gone up since then.

Tossing the compost into the sifter, one pitchfork full at a time, is not too hard. And the sifter does all the work after that, dropping the finished compost into the cart in the middle and the rejects into the cart at the end. I use the sifted compost in the raised beds, and the reject cart typically gets dumped back into the chicken run for more composting in place. Sometimes I use that reject cart stuff as top mulch on the beds.

Anyways, I got the sifting part of my composting process down to a minimal level of effort. It's just the work manually loading up the Gorilla cart inside the chicken run and bringing it outside to the compost sifter that I would like to find a better way of doing it.

 

[Land of Lincoln]

That’s a heckuva setup you have there with the mixer. How often do you clean the run out? It’s amazing how fast that stuff can accumulate in the run.

I have typically between 12-15 chickens at any point and my run is completely covered in hardware cloth. My run is just a touch over 6 feet tall and I’m 5-10, so when the run has been emptied of all the soil an chicken manure, up I can stand upright in it without having to tilt my head. However, that doesn’t typically last too long because I only really empty it out maybe 4x a year. I clean the coop much more often but not the run.

I always put the remnants from the coop and run in a pile to age for a while. Only time I use it fresh is when I’m starting a new hot compost pile. That stuff can really get the heat going in a compost pile so I use some of it for that. The rest I’ll sprinkle around areas I’m going to be growing in. Whenever I’m shoveling it from the pile into my wheelbarrow, I always have an empty coffee can with me to toss the grubs in and feed to the girls. I don’t know what it is about the chicken manure but the grubs I get out of it are always huge like the diameter of a finger, it’s unreal.

Didn’t know if you used any of your chicken run compost in regular compost piles or not? That’s some good stuff for sure and kudos to you on your sifter system, that’s pretty clever.