When you put a former IT manager and an accountant/educator together, everything immediately turns into process. How can activities be effective and efficient? How do you employ the correct resources at the right time? How do you stop from running into each other?
So even though this is gardening, here's what we've learned about process after just one morning of manure work:
- two people are required at a minimum.
- recognize that fifteen yards of manure must be dumped outside of a fenced in garden with raised beds. In our case, the distance to be traveled from pile to bed and back is up to 200 feet.
- ask for aged manure that has been sieved. Since ours wasn't sieved, separate the big lumps as you are loading the good manure to be moved. The big lumps go in a storage area that already contains almost-ready soil, compost and leaves.
- transport the good manure in four 21L pails(.75 cubic feet) inside a wheel barrow (6 cubic feet) since it is too hard to unload this size of wheelbarrow in the constrained space between rows and up in raised beds
- each person loads two pails all the while separating the big lumps.
- the first person takes the manure into the beds and dumps the individual pails then exits the garden and returns to the pile. Once each bed is full (currently sixteen pails), rake the manure over the entire bed.
- the second person keeps the source pile neat, rakes the manure on either side of the loading area all the while looking for more large lumps for the storage area.
- We anticipate it takes half an hour to top off each of our beds with the manure.
- If there are more than two people, the third person rakes the raised beds.
- If there are more than three people, then the fourth person helps at the pile, either moving big lumps to the storage area, or keeping the pile organized. If you have another four pails, then these could be loaded for the returning first person and wheelbarrow.
- If there are more than four people, more wheelbarrows! More pails!
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