This is a text from one of my earliest and most committed adopters of Microbe MasterMix. Months since the last application and still reaping rewards for setting the stage of properly cycling microbiology in an animal husbandry system. Because it's not just about "the smells". The lack of smells is an indicator that nutrients are cycling and held in complex forms. Pathogens are starved out. The microbiome the animals live in is fostering a more positive environment. This is just the beginning in discovering the downstream - and long term - benefits of restoring balanced microbiology. Do you want to see a qualitative shift in how your animals are living? I think you'll be surprised at just how easy it is.

Here's a little journal style update about the last few weeks of my experience with microscope viewing my compost piles. Have questions about anything I bring up? Please ask! I love to bring clarity to the little bits and pieces. If you caught me in the last couple weeks, you may have noticed that I was dumping buckets of microbes on a long compost pile. This was in response to having taken some samples of them for some time on the microscope, and seeing a reasonable predator population (in this case testate amoeba), but a somewhat low population of the bacteria, yeast, and spores that they typically feed on. I didn't hate the ratios I was seeing, but it looked emptier than I wanted. This made some sense to me because the piles had dried further than I would have liked in an ideal situation. They weren't *dried out*, but didn't have the drop of water from a squeeze that I'd really be going for. - More on compost moisture another time. I'll probably post some photos of what I was seeing that week in the comments to give a visual to the comparison. Since I had 2 piles, I decided to remoisturize them differently. On one pile, I only added water as I regularly would with my soaker hose. With the other, the same, but I also manually applied 25 gallons of Microbe MasterMix. My theory was that perhaps I would see a significant boost in that pile relative to the other pile. As fate would have it, we got quite a lot of rain this last week. I could tell the compost loved it. The garden soils all loved it. It was a long, slow drizzle that is not typical for this season in Arizona. So now I had a new variable of amazing rainwater influencing all of my piles equally. The results were pretty spectacular. In both piles the testate amoeba counts were much higher. They looked full, and the landscape of bacterial jiggling was filled out. I was truly impressed by the ability of the piles to increase their robustness with a simple return of more ideal moisture levels. That is not always the case for compost.

Here's a short video update on my first Johnson-Su pit variation compost. It could probably use a more elegant name, but for now I'm aiming for accuracy in the description. If you haven't heard of Johnson-Su or BEAM compost, you are in for a treat. In my peer group of soil nerds, where talking shop often consists of rating the excrement of different animals, there appears to be a convergence in thought around compost. Namely, that variations of Johnson-Su are simply the best all around direction to take compost creation. -Running a hot compost with 3 flips? Probably want to cure it in Johnson-Su. -Making some worm castings? That biology in a Johnson-Su will be next level. -Got a pile of random weeds and woodchips in the yard? Johnson-Su coming to the rescue. So what makes a Johnson-Su compost, and why should we be mimicking and adapting its techniques? My best summary of what a Johnson-Su "is" is a static compost pile that is aerated through the most passive access to air possible. Specifically, the use of some form of perforated pipes to allow all of the composting material to be within 18 inches of direct air contact. This is different than other static (meaning we don't flip or disturb it) piles because in previous versions of the aerated static pile (ASP) the air is pushed into the system with some type of forced air blower. We have none of that here. In the original method, the compost his held in a circular wire cage of some sort, often with some mesh or fabric to minimize solar and wind exposure, and to not let it all fall out. By the time I learned about it, many people had dropped the mesh, or switched to burlap, because of an increased awareness and witnessing of microplastics. Then my teacher Matt Powers was talking about making one in a pit! I found this to be a brilliant idea, I have clay soil so the hole would retain its form, and I got the opportunity to borrow a tractor. What this did is bring some natural parent material (dirt), get out of the sun and wind, mediate temperature with earthen mass, and bring in a stronger opportunity for earth worms.

Anybody have a favorite microbe lol

I had some microscope time this week and I took the opportunity to check up on my Microbe MasterMix. I was pleased to see many different shapes of bacteria and also some good yeast clumps. Since you can't identify individual species of bacteria using a microscope, the diversity of forms (or morphology if you like fancy words) is a good indicator of genetic diversity in the brew. Also, the density of life is looking quite good.