by Tara Laidlaw, Burgess Farm Director

While a few brave plants are continuing to produce, most of the plants in the garden have given up the fight with the shorter days and cooler temperatures. That means that it’s time to pull them all up and put them in a giant compost heap, where they’ll spend the winter getting checked out by the garden FBI (Fungus, Bacteria, and Invertebrates), decomposers who turn the plant waste into nutrient-rich compost which we can use to fertilize our garden beds next spring.

As it turns out, chickens love compost, so we’ve set aside a section of their pen that’s going to be compost central for the whole farm. They’ll scratch through the scraps, nibble on the leftover leaves, peck at weed seeds, and gobble up bugs. They’ll also poop on the pile, which adds even more nutrients. Come spring, we’ll sift the pile to separate out rocks, sticks, and other debris that we don’t want in the beds. And then once the weeds start to grow (and we start to pull them out), the whole cycle will begin again!