of bones, boiled bones, bone grinders, etc...

[flowerbug]

having read elsewhere's recently about boiling bones to make broths i was thinking about my own setup and that since i'm cooking that ways so little the past ten years or so i'm really not making soups or broths like i was when i cooked for myself.

these days it is very rare for us to have bones at all at home. the meat we buy no longer has bones in it. we might once in a great while get a ham bone or a whole chicken, but not very often.

this then makes me think about what i heard years ago from a garden friend. that he set up an old garbage disposal unit in an outdoor location so that he could grind stuff out there instead of doing it in the house. the goodies that came from that went into the compost pile and then eventually into the gardens. yes, he had great soil in those gardens...

i love the idea in principle. getting all those bone goodies chopped up and then put back into the gardens to continue the nutrient cycle. what i didn't like (and still don't) is the noise. there are other versions of a bone grinder and i've also read in some of the permaculture books about making bone sauce (to use as a deer/herbivore deterrent - Sepp Holzer was the author in this case, i haven't looked if anyone else had written it up in as much detail as he did). but i digress...

my own method of dealing with bones is go out in a garden, dig a hole, bury, down about a foot. i've never had any other creatures come along and dig them back up again. what i do find really interesting is that i hardly ever see those bones again. something in the soil is taking care of breaking them down.

and because i'm the curious sort about rotting and what is doing on down there under the ground i have my own in house bone rotting studies going.

what do i find when i look at bones that have been in the worm buckets with dirt for a year or two? millipedes seem to congregate inside the bones. i think they're doing a great job, but i cannot scientifically say they are doing it. they just seem guilty by being in that place when i happen to look. the bones pretty much do crumble and fall apart.

i don't keep much in the worm buckets over a year or two because i am regenerating the garden soil and so most of it gets put back out into the gardens after it has been soaking up worm poo/worm pee for a year. it really is great stuff. oh, and i don't bother to segregate the worms out from it either. i just empty most or all of the bucket into the garden and then restart the bucket from one's i've kept in reserve. it builds up my worm populations in the gardens (even if it is not the case that the adults do well, many of the smaller ones will sometimes survive - depending upon which species mix i'm using)...

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

My wife and I buy beef by the 1/2 cow so we end up with a lot of bones and fat. I frankly don't do much with the bones because ...I just don't. I don't want to go through the process of making bone meal (clean the bone, baking the bone and grinding it down) and though I have at times planted a bone, fish or dead animal under a tree I don't on a regular basis put the bones of the cow into our soil. We're looking to move to a house with some acreage, so maybe I'll experiment more there.

 

[thistlebloom]

That's interesting stuff Flowerbug.

I had that idea about a garbage disposal set up outdoors to handle the compost from the kitchen. I guess it wasn't an original concept, nice to know somebody implemented it successfully.

I just toss it all into the chicken pen.What they aren't interested in gets scratched around and broken down eventually.
I don't usually have too many bones to deal with either.

 

[baymule]

That's good ideas about the bones. We have bones, but the dogs eat them. The larger, harder bones last longer, the dogs love to gnaw on them.

 

[so lucky]

I used to throw scraps to the chickens, bones and all. The bones would get mixed with chicken poop and straw, and go into the garden at some point. I find bones in the garden all the time, dry and brittle, but still intact. Guess they need to be buried to decompose.

Having a garbage disposal in the garden area kind of reminds me of Fargo.

 

[journey11]

I've buried innumerable chickens, opossums, groundhogs, etc. in my garden, and it is rare that I find but a couple fragments of bones. I do like you, bury them down about a foot. I've had no problems with anything digging them up either. I pick one corner of my garden to pile a couple loads of manure on, then bury everything that dies or is butchered that year in that corner. It is decomposed by the following year. They say not to put fat in your compost, but buried deeply enough, the various organisms break it all down. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

When our pets die, we bury them beneath our landscape and fruit trees.

I've told my family, when that day comes, just to bury me deep in my compost pile. That's where I want to be!

 

[flowerbug]

That's good ideas about the bones. We have bones, but the dogs eat them. The larger, harder bones last longer, the dogs love to gnaw on them.

the doggies are your bone grinders. much more friendly than an insinkerator...

 

[flowerbug]

I've buried innumerable chickens, opossums, groundhogs, etc. in my garden, and it is rare that I find but a couple fragments of bones. I do like you, bury them down about a foot. I've had no problems with anything digging them up either. I pick one corner of my garden to pile a couple loads of manure on, then bury everything that dies or is butchered that year in that corner. It is decomposed by the following year. They say not to put fat in your compost, but buried deeply enough, the various organisms break it all down. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

When our pets die, we bury them beneath our landscape and fruit trees.

I've told my family, when that day comes, just to bury me deep in my compost pile. That's where I want to be!

yes, i never worry about what happens when i can bury things outside. the soil organisms know what to do with it all eventually. mainly i just want to avoid making the raccoons think i'm feeding them. having an easy go of it.

so far i'm pretty surprised that in all of the years of putting millions of worms out in the gardens the raccoons haven't figured out how many big juicy worms are under all the garden plants. they've never once dug any up.

while they have dug up some of the greenhouse starts because i'm pretty sure they smell the fertilizer in the potting mix and think there's food down there. once we put things inside the fence the raccoons have left everything alone. onions grown from seed never get touched no matter where i put 'em.

and the same on what to do with me when i'm done. dig a hole, push me in, let the worms have their due.

 

[flowerbug]

I used to throw scraps to the chickens, bones and all. The bones would get mixed with chicken poop and straw, and go into the garden at some point. I find bones in the garden all the time, dry and brittle, but still intact. Guess they need to be buried to decompose.

Having a garbage disposal in the garden area kind of reminds me of Fargo.

yeah, buried and enough moisture to keep the various soil creatures active enough.

the thing i like is that i don't even have to grind them up at all.

 

[flowerbug]

My wife and I buy beef by the 1/2 cow so we end up with a lot of bones and fat. I frankly don't do much with the bones because ...I just don't. I don't want to go through the process of making bone meal (clean the bone, baking the bone and grinding it down) and though I have at times planted a bone, fish or dead animal under a tree I don't on a regular basis put the bones of the cow into our soil. We're looking to move to a house with some acreage, so maybe I'll experiment more there.

Sprig, i've never gone through all that either. i think the soil creatures can do a good enough job on sterilizing that i've never worried about cooking stuff again. it's already been through that at least once by the time i am getting rid of it or feeding it to the worms. the worms do their own version of biological control (they can deal with salmonella) by grinding everything up and innoculating with their own bacterial buddies.

because i am burying things i'm also not as concerned about spreading diseases.