What are we going to do with all this stuff?
Ever notice when you drive by farms there's usually a bunch of old tractors, cars, saws, cranes, tools and other rusting metal objects strewn across the lawn? Hey, we never like to throw anything away! We might be able to use it someday... . However, some things DO have to be thrown out.
The managing of waste is a big issue in dairying. Our milking barn is cleaned and washed three times a day, after each milking of the herd. We also flush our free-stall barn, where the cows rest and eat after milking. The mixture of waste and water goes into several holding ponds where the solid and liquid wastes are separated. The solids are then composted and eventually are spread onto the fields.
When Bill Straus first began farming on the hills along the eastern shore of Tomales Bay in 1941, he was the first farmer in our area to spread decomposed liquid waste on the fields as fertilizer, to sustain the richness of the soil.
These days we are experimenting with new methods of breaking down waste, as first implemented by our friend, sanitation expert and waste-management specialist, Kit Rosefield. Our first project, in 1998, was the development of a system that uses bacterial inoculation to break down the waste and reduce the solid matter. This system helps to increase absorption of nutrients by cover crops when wastes are decomposed and helps stop harmful stream and bay contamination by preventing soil runoff. Treated water is also recycled to flush the free stall barn floor.
Our most efficient and effective method for handling waste is to burn it...in our Advanced Integrated Pond System with a Methane Digester.