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The Manure Tea Barrel

Here is our new manure tea barrel. The recipe is simple.  Fill the barrel about a quarter full of fresh manure from your animal of choice. We use alpaca dung. It is allegedly a 'cool' fertilizer; i.e. it will not burn plants when applied. Here it is very diluted so there is even less chance of harm. If you use another hot manure, like chicken poop some caution may be required. In our case,  the fresher the manure the less dung beetles will be crawling around inside the manure. We like the dung beetles because they bury the manure in the ground for you so we don't like to drown them.

55 gallon manure tea pot

Any barrel will do; we use a lot of the stuff so this 55 gallon drum is nice. We filter it once through a screen, then through cheesecloth into our sprayer - Then we just spray the stuff around the garden.

Garden after several fertilizer treatments

This is what one of our edible back door gardens looks like after several applications of the manure tea. Before everything was struggling in our heavy clay soil. 

The tomatoes after feeding on manure tea

 The tomatoes like the tea too. This plant here is over four feet tall after a few weeks of manure tea.

Potatoes love manure tea

I'm having a hard time keeping up with piling hay on the potatoes after fertilizing them with the manure tea. The stuff is truly magical; especially if you have marginal soil to begin with. It feels like cheating. Over time as the soil improves less fertilizing will be necessary. But for now, this stuff is really handy.

Attack of the horseflies!

Hoards of blood sucking demon horse flies abound in these parts. They flood in droves from the forests like orcs and goblins out of the gates of Mordor. Thus we have resorted to taking up arms, in self-defense, against these ghastly flying demons. The first solution to this emergent crisis is the state of the art contraption you see below. 

Fly Trapper-Zapper Mark I

We don't take credit for the design, just the construction. It is commonly available as the 'Horse Pal'. The main difference is price. Theirs costs $265 while ours cost us about $0.25.

The fly death chamber gets up-cycled from it's previous status as a peanut butter container.

It works by mimicking the movement of a warm blooded animal. The black exterior mimics the body and the black milk jug hanging below mimics the head movement of an animal. The flies are attracted to the swinging 'head' of the animal. When they realize they've been had, they instinctively fly for the sky, i.e. straight up into the trap. Eventually they make their way up the cone into the peanut butter/death container where the sun zaps them. We are peaceful folks, but when you mess with our animals, you're messin' with family, and we are gonna mess back.  Flies - leave us in peace please!

Next year we're are calling in the swallows for aerial support by building many garrisons bird houses around our property. We WILL be ready.