Most Americans here have no idea about or interest in the amazing benefits of composting leaves sadly. Many smaller towns still take them to the landfill, and a lot of my neighbors burn them! I moved to a town that had been collecting leaves at the curb for decades and had several huge piles, each at least 20 feet tall and 30 feet across, and when I dug into them they were amazing composted leaf material. I was in heaven and dreaming of truckloads of free gorgeous black compost for my gardens until I realized they're all infested with Asian Jumping Worms and totally useless. So very, very sad. Now I try to collect all the gathered leaves I can in the fall while they're fresh, before they get colonized by the worms.
I’ll be collecting more leaf bags on Tuesday, can never seem to have too many, so versatile. I was able to collect a substantial amount of seaweed this fall for garden beds. So much abundance to be had if you are willing to put in a little work. Proud as a wee rooster as they say.
@@edibleacres hurricane season provided plenty this year, one benefit of living on the coast. One of my favourite mulches. Potatoes and seaweed are especially well suited.
I lucked out this year and have been able to bring dump trailer loads of shredded leaves home from the landscaping company I work for. I’m filling the chicken run and making some more rings and fencing areas to stack the leaves high. I guess I’ll also use them in the chicken roost as a deep mulch this winter. I have so many my wife told me to stop bringing them home. Anyway if anyone has other ideas on what to do with tons of leaves I’m all ears!
Mulch all of your garden beds & perennial plantings, as well with them. Dramatically cuts down on spring weed "blooms" in these areas, protects plantings from stress caused by heaving from freeze/thaw cycles.
I thought I finally had you. I get all the wood chips from a tree service delivered to a back corner of my property, so I thought I was one up on you, as I have about 70 loads of chips in reserve. So how is it that I'm still jealous?! I wish our town used bags. No leaves for me. :( they just vacuum them up where I am. So, I'm still chasing you Mr. Jones. ;)
Never a competition, we're all just collecting organic matter as best we can where we can. I'm lucky to have a couple amazingly abundant leaf bag spots I can hit. One church puts out reliably about 40-60 bags all tidy in a row all maple and honey locust leaves each fall. That alone helps immensely. Your chip scene sounds amazing!
I enjoyed this video,seeing the chickens free-range enjoying the worms and food scraps and scratching through the leaves. That was really relaxing. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏽
Wow amazing compost for chickens, the wire rings are a great idea Im going to start doing that. I collect a lot of leaves but have no outside source for scraps. Thanks for sharing! Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing for the last couple of weeks taking advantage of the fall and more leaves now and getting compost straightened out. Great idea for layering the leaves then food. Our chickens go through the food but I suppose they do leave some for the worms😮 We too like to work in the yard when the chickens may help they definitely are great tillers. Plus when I freak out from the bugs they are on their JOB
George and Lenny, "of mice and Men" reference? Love it if so! ...and thanks for the video. Hope you and your loves are settling into your new life together.
Excellent video! I got many of my chicken composting ideas from you! I think that was cool that you showed people a technique for handling the leaf bags. This looks amazing. Be well.
Nice! My best friend and I scavenge leaves for our chicken coops every Fall. She keeps her chickens in her summer garden during the winter, adding loads of leaves and compost for the hens to scratch through- she has the BEST garden every summer. My hens live in our barn during the winter and I add a couple of bags of leaves to their coop every week or so. I have to haul the bedding out in the Spring so more work for me, but worth it- the leaves make awesome compost. I hauled around 80 bags last Fall and ran out of time before I had "enough". I would have loved to have gotten 180 bags. Maybe next year. I also use the leaves in my hedgehog and snail bioactive enclosures and as feed for my isopods and as bedding/feed for the worms that I raise in my basement, plus I use them in my goat pens- and I have never had enough for all of that- so my need for leaves is ongoing and year round. A question though- how is your property not infested with rats/mice? I get a huge box of produce waste each week from a grocery store- but it is for the worms. If I tried to feed it to my chickens I would have rats all over the place. We do have a compost bucket for kitchen scraps and we give that to the chickens, but they eat it all early in the day, so nothing left to attract rats.
Rats have come and gone and they were super helpful in aerating compost and making a finetextured product actually! THen minks came in I think and wiped them out more or less like a snap, it was crazy. So they were helpful and a little stressful then gone!
Nice haul of leaves! I'm up to 12 bags, and have almost enough to completely insulate my big compost pile. Also experimenting with alternating leaves with greens, coffee grounds, and urea (ahem) in some barrels I have, inoculating the whole barrel with LAB. My town has a big leaf vacuum, so I have to go to the next town over to get leaf bags. I don't come home empty! I just love your magnificent compost system. I can see it's a lot of heavy work! Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
Try to find out where they empty the leaves they vacuum up, if it's like what I found you can get tons of chopped and shredded leaves nicely packed and easy to move with a pickup. add some chicken poop soup and keep watered and turn weekly and the pile hits like 130F for weeks at a time. I'm having way better success keeping my pile hot using the vacuum leaves then I used to with raked up/bagged whole leaves. Heading back for another truckload or two today!
@@GreenMachine1365 They're at the dump - er, transfer station. I'll check to see how chopped they are. That would indeed be a bonus! Thanks for the tip! (And chicken poop at the ready!]
Thank you. Do you have a video you can recommend where you address mold? We prefer to compost inside the chicken yard but have seen a number of poisoning concerns online in regards to chickens eating molded foods. Thank you.
I don't have a video on it... I don't believe we've observed issues with it. That is no way me saying it isn't there or a problem just haven't seen it manifest in a way where we need to address it... We try to avoid and a very active and balanced warm compost is the perfect way to avoid that problem, but haven't had it be a real issue...
Sean, can you share a map of the layout of your property, especially the chicken "facilities"? Just a simple sketch of an overhead viee would help so much in visualizing the intricacies of the chicken compost procedure...❤
We try to, it's the main sources we get from for the most part, but we're open to other options once in a while.... Trying tnot to be picky/fussy but also recognizing how small a separation it is from what they eat to what they make!
Great leafbag science there. I'm building a safe space for worms in an abandoned dog's cage under a walnut tree. So far around 50 bags emptied and counting. Also, many many for the chickens to play with of course. Can I ask eberyone here to HELP me with ideas what to do with all the black plastic bags that I end up with after emptying them? I was going to return them to ppl next year but I heard that the local council will finally introduce paperbags so now need to find a solution for them rather than landfill. Tried squeezing them in big plastic bottles to create "plastic bricks" but its too slow to find the motivation for it. So, any ideas are very welcome! Thanks
Great you are experimenting with this as well... As far as the garbage bags... We got them in the past from folks with leaves and I would hang them out to dry then fold them up and use for our own garbage... But if you have an excess, maybe you'll start selling/trading plants soon and can use them to wrap roots with sawdust :)
Thanks for giving (pun intended) this much needed "eye bleach." I love watching this kind of stuff before bed, makes my dreams much nicer! Now that the hens are semi-retired, how are you supplementing the protein requirements for George, Lenny and especially Stanley? I'm assuming egg production is down.
An alternative name for your channel could be "Fertility Acres". I'm struck, although maybe it shouldn't be surprising, how much of your work is fertility management.
With as much food waste as you are able to get from what I only assume are semi local vendors, you should consider raising pigs. That is especially true if you have plenty of excess nut trees. I know you harvest a lot of nuts for personal use each year, but for all I know that could only be the tip of the iceberg. Point is I don't know your situation like you do, but you may want to consider it. My main reason for commenting is so other commenters can judge their situation. You could even do that as a winter video idea. What things to consider when adding an animal to a homestead. You could run through the pros and cons of adding pigs to your homestead, but the basics are true for any animal. As a winter video you don't have to be outsidejust run through the logic and data.
I love what you do to keep your girls healthy and living their best lives. Happy Thanksgiving to you, Juan and your families!
No chicken but also in love with leaves. Unfortunaley no leaves bags in my part of Germany. But enough for my little garden. Greetings
Most Americans here have no idea about or interest in the amazing benefits of composting leaves sadly. Many smaller towns still take them to the landfill, and a lot of my neighbors burn them! I moved to a town that had been collecting leaves at the curb for decades and had several huge piles, each at least 20 feet tall and 30 feet across, and when I dug into them they were amazing composted leaf material. I was in heaven and dreaming of truckloads of free gorgeous black compost for my gardens until I realized they're all infested with Asian Jumping Worms and totally useless. So very, very sad. Now I try to collect all the gathered leaves I can in the fall while they're fresh, before they get colonized by the worms.
The 3D creates windbreaks too. Giving hens a place to escape any cold blasts moving in soon
For sure good point
The GOAT of chicken composting systems
Thanks kindly!
looks awesome! hoping for some chicken TV soon. im sure the ladies must have been thrilled at all those worms being turned over.
I’ll be collecting more leaf bags on Tuesday, can never seem to have too many, so versatile. I was able to collect a substantial amount of seaweed this fall for garden beds. So much abundance to be had if you are willing to put in a little work. Proud as a wee rooster as they say.
Seaweed sounds dreamy...
@@edibleacres hurricane season provided plenty this year, one benefit of living on the coast. One of my favourite mulches. Potatoes and seaweed are especially well suited.
I lucked out this year and have been able to bring dump trailer loads of shredded leaves home from the landscaping company I work for. I’m filling the chicken run and making some more rings and fencing areas to stack the leaves high. I guess I’ll also use them in the chicken roost as a deep mulch this winter. I have so many my wife told me to stop bringing them home. Anyway if anyone has other ideas on what to do with tons of leaves I’m all ears!
Mulch all of your garden beds & perennial plantings, as well with them. Dramatically cuts down on spring weed "blooms" in these areas, protects plantings from stress caused by heaving from freeze/thaw cycles.
you always have new idias life is beautiful when you comeup with idias.
Thanksgiving day with chicken tv 😮
I thought I finally had you. I get all the wood chips from a tree service delivered to a back corner of my property, so I thought I was one up on you, as I have about 70 loads of chips in reserve. So how is it that I'm still jealous?! I wish our town used bags. No leaves for me. :( they just vacuum them up where I am. So, I'm still chasing you Mr. Jones. ;)
Never a competition, we're all just collecting organic matter as best we can where we can. I'm lucky to have a couple amazingly abundant leaf bag spots I can hit. One church puts out reliably about 40-60 bags all tidy in a row all maple and honey locust leaves each fall. That alone helps immensely.
Your chip scene sounds amazing!
I enjoyed this video,seeing the chickens free-range enjoying the worms and food scraps and scratching through the leaves. That was really relaxing. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏽
Our pleasure!
Wow amazing compost for chickens, the wire rings are a great idea Im going to start doing that. I collect a lot of leaves but have no outside source for scraps. Thanks for sharing! Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing for the last couple of weeks taking advantage of the fall and more leaves now and getting compost straightened out. Great idea for layering the leaves then food.
Our chickens go through the food but I suppose they do leave some for the worms😮
We too like to work in the yard when the chickens may help they definitely are great tillers.
Plus when I freak out from the bugs they are on their JOB
George and Lenny, "of mice and Men" reference? Love it if so! ...and thanks for the video. Hope you and your loves are settling into your new life together.
Not an intentional name pair but folks like it so we like it too :)
i love the way you keep them warm and feed them real food i learn a lot hopefully soon i will have chicken i am in proces to find a land take care.
Best of luck!
You always have new creative ideas 👍🏼 We've been collecting leaves 🍂🍁🍂 as well. They're so beneficial.
Yes they are!
You’ve got some very happy chickens, it’s like they have their own playground to play in all day and dig!
They seem pretty content overall
Excellent video! I got many of my chicken composting ideas from you! I think that was cool that you showed people a technique for handling the leaf bags. This looks amazing. Be well.
Nice! My best friend and I scavenge leaves for our chicken coops every Fall. She keeps her chickens in her summer garden during the winter, adding loads of leaves and compost for the hens to scratch through- she has the BEST garden every summer. My hens live in our barn during the winter and I add a couple of bags of leaves to their coop every week or so. I have to haul the bedding out in the Spring so more work for me, but worth it- the leaves make awesome compost. I hauled around 80 bags last Fall and ran out of time before I had "enough". I would have loved to have gotten 180 bags. Maybe next year. I also use the leaves in my hedgehog and snail bioactive enclosures and as feed for my isopods and as bedding/feed for the worms that I raise in my basement, plus I use them in my goat pens- and I have never had enough for all of that- so my need for leaves is ongoing and year round.
A question though- how is your property not infested with rats/mice? I get a huge box of produce waste each week from a grocery store- but it is for the worms. If I tried to feed it to my chickens I would have rats all over the place. We do have a compost bucket for kitchen scraps and we give that to the chickens, but they eat it all early in the day, so nothing left to attract rats.
Rats have come and gone and they were super helpful in aerating compost and making a finetextured product actually! THen minks came in I think and wiped them out more or less like a snap, it was crazy. So they were helpful and a little stressful then gone!
I always enjoy your informative as well as relaxing videos ❤
So glad!
Nice haul of leaves! I'm up to 12 bags, and have almost enough to completely insulate my big compost pile. Also experimenting with alternating leaves with greens, coffee grounds, and urea (ahem) in some barrels I have, inoculating the whole barrel with LAB. My town has a big leaf vacuum, so I have to go to the next town over to get leaf bags. I don't come home empty!
I just love your magnificent compost system. I can see it's a lot of heavy work! Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
Try to find out where they empty the leaves they vacuum up, if it's like what I found you can get tons of chopped and shredded leaves nicely packed and easy to move with a pickup. add some chicken poop soup and keep watered and turn weekly and the pile hits like 130F for weeks at a time. I'm having way better success keeping my pile hot using the vacuum leaves then I used to with raked up/bagged whole leaves. Heading back for another truckload or two today!
@@GreenMachine1365 They're at the dump - er, transfer station. I'll check to see how chopped they are. That would indeed be a bonus! Thanks for the tip! (And chicken poop at the ready!]
I was just passing by and was captured by your vid. Im a leaf collector too. No chickens, im afraid.
Still at it aged 72.
So great! Happy collecting to you!!!
Love comparing notes with you
So glad!
Thank you. Do you have a video you can recommend where you address mold? We prefer to compost inside the chicken yard but have seen a number of poisoning concerns online in regards to chickens eating molded foods. Thank you.
I don't have a video on it... I don't believe we've observed issues with it. That is no way me saying it isn't there or a problem just haven't seen it manifest in a way where we need to address it... We try to avoid and a very active and balanced warm compost is the perfect way to avoid that problem, but haven't had it be a real issue...
The happy girls are just doing their thing with their favourite human. 😂😊❤
:)
What an awesome video!!!! Happy holidays and happy parenthood! PS WHAT AN ADORABLE LITTLE ROOSTER MAN
Awesome and a pleasure to watch. cheers
Always happy to know you enjoy Antio
Thanks for the video.
My blue heeler loves leaf bags, but only when she thinks something is living in them!
I could imagine
I love this video an I will definitely be trying this out.
Good luck!
Sean, can you share a map of the layout of your property, especially the chicken "facilities"? Just a simple sketch of an overhead viee would help so much in visualizing the intricacies of the chicken compost procedure...❤
There is an older video showing the property - taken from a drone.
You deserve a lot of 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Support comment - thanks for the good context
For your compost that you source from restaurants, do you source organic? just curious.
We try to, it's the main sources we get from for the most part, but we're open to other options once in a while.... Trying tnot to be picky/fussy but also recognizing how small a separation it is from what they eat to what they make!
oh nice! good to know, I guess its about finding that balance.@@edibleacres
Great leafbag science there.
I'm building a safe space for worms in an abandoned dog's cage under a walnut tree. So far around 50 bags emptied and counting. Also, many many for the chickens to play with of course.
Can I ask eberyone here to HELP me with ideas what to do with all the black plastic bags that I end up with after emptying them? I was going to return them to ppl next year but I heard that the local council will finally introduce paperbags so now need to find a solution for them rather than landfill. Tried squeezing them in big plastic bottles to create "plastic bricks" but its too slow to find the motivation for it. So, any ideas are very welcome! Thanks
Great you are experimenting with this as well... As far as the garbage bags... We got them in the past from folks with leaves and I would hang them out to dry then fold them up and use for our own garbage... But if you have an excess, maybe you'll start selling/trading plants soon and can use them to wrap roots with sawdust :)
Where/ how do you get the leaves?
doing this in seattle (gig harbor)
So great!
Thanks for giving (pun intended) this much needed "eye bleach." I love watching this kind of stuff before bed, makes my dreams much nicer!
Now that the hens are semi-retired, how are you supplementing the protein requirements for George, Lenny and especially Stanley? I'm assuming egg production is down.
Eggs are down but we also have ample meats we can provide the sweet mammals in the home... So glad these videos offer a sense of peace to you!
Neat!
Actually if this may be applicable the chickens themself can create a generous revenue stream and a payment currency given a food abundance available.
This system could be modified in ways to make it a viable income for someone for sure. The compost could have valuable income for someone
Can you share your chicken house or where your girls sleep?
It isn't amazing looking right now for sure so we haven't documented it in a while, I'll keep this in mind though
Does anyone here have a good tip for stopping chickens eating their own eggs? I tried fake eggs and mustard already.
An alternative name for your channel could be "Fertility Acres".
I'm struck, although maybe it shouldn't be surprising, how much of your work is fertility management.
It is a massive part of the work in our system to be sure
With as much food waste as you are able to get from what I only assume are semi local vendors, you should consider raising pigs. That is especially true if you have plenty of excess nut trees. I know you harvest a lot of nuts for personal use each year, but for all I know that could only be the tip of the iceberg. Point is I don't know your situation like you do, but you may want to consider it. My main reason for commenting is so other commenters can judge their situation. You could even do that as a winter video idea. What things to consider when adding an animal to a homestead. You could run through the pros and cons of adding pigs to your homestead, but the basics are true for any animal. As a winter video you don't have to be outsidejust run through the logic and data.
It is no homestead, it's a nursey for trees and other plants. 😉
Don't think it suits his context
wots wrong with ur camera gad demmat?
6:51 haha look at this cringe smoll chook
me no caringo about doggingo okay? only chuksota.