In most parts of the country, enough organic materials accumulate
around an average home and yard to make all the compost a backyard
garden needs. You probably have weeds, leaves, perhaps your own
human hair (my wife is the family barber), dust from the vacuum
cleaner, kitchen garbage and grass clippings. But, there may not be
enough to simultaneously build the lushest lawn, the healthiest
ornamentals _and _grow the vegetables. If you want to make more
compost than your own land allows, it is not difficult to find very
large quantities of organic materials that are free or cost very
little.
The most obvious material to bring in for composting is animal
manure. Chicken and egg raisers and boarding stables often give
manure away or sell it for a nominal fee. For a few dollars most
small scale animal growers will cheerfully use their scoop loader to
fill your pickup truck till the springs sag.
As useful as animal manure can be in a compost pile, there are other
types of low C/N materials too. Enormous quantities of loose alfalfa
accumulate around hay bale stacks at feed and grain stores. To the
proprietor this dusty chaff is a nuisance gladly given to anyone
that will neatly sweep it up and truck it away. To the home
gardener, alfalfa in any form is rich as gold.
Some years, rainy Oregon weather is still unsettled at haying season
and farmers are stuck with spoiled hay. I'm sure this happens most
places that grass hay is grown on natural rainfall. Though a shrewd
farmer may try to sell moldy hay at a steep discount by representing
it to still have feed value, actually these ruined bales must be
removed from a field before they interfere with working the land. A
hard bargainer can often get spoiled hay in exchange for hauling the
wet bales out of the field
There's one local farmer near me whose entire family tree holds a
well-deserved reputation for hard, self-interested dealing. One
particularly wet, cool unsettled haying season, after starting the
spoiled-hay dicker at 90 cents per bale asked--nothing offered but
hauling the soggy bales out of the field my offer--I finally agreed
to take away about twenty tons at ten cents per bale. This small sum
allowed the greedy b-----to feel he had gotten the better of me. He
needed that feeling far more than I needed to win the argument or to
keep the few dollars Besides, the workings of self-applied justice
that some religious philosophers call karma show that over the long
haul the worst thing one person can do to another is to allow the
other to get away with an evil act.
Any dedicated composter can make contacts yielding cheap or free
organic materials by the ton. Orchards may have badly bruised or
rotting fruit. Small cider mills, wineries, or a local juice bar
restaurant may be glad to get rid of pomace. Carpentry shops have
sawdust. Coffee roasters have dust and chaff. The microbrewery is
becoming very popular these days; mall-scale local brewers and
distillers may have spent hops and mash. Spoiled product or chaff
may be available from cereal mills.
City governments often will deliver autumn leaves by the ton and
will give away or sell the output of their own municipal composting
operations. Supermarkets, produce wholesalers, and restaurants may
be willing to give away boxes of trimmings and spoiled food. Barbers
and poodle groomers throw away hair.
Seafood processors will sell truckloads of fresh crab, fish and
shrimp waste for a small fee. Of course, this material becomes
evil-smelling in very short order but might be relatively
inoffensive if a person had a lot of spoiled hay or sawdust waiting
to mix into it. Market gardeners near the Oregon coast sheet-compost
crab waste, tilling it into the soil before it gets too "high."
Other parts of the country might supply citrus wastes, sugar cane
bagasse, rice hulls, etc.