Re: [compost_tea] NOT confused and NOT alarmed

From: w.reece speas <wrspeas_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 01:32:34 -0800 (PST)

I haven't read her post but I'm dam glad to read this post , good job , BOB
Sincerly w.reece speas
Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com> wrote:Linda you touched some hot buttons among the List. Pro and Con And mine.
Lets see, This manufacturer started gardening as a 4H club member in 1926. Have you been into gardening longer? Horticulture? No, I went engineering, bomber pilot, architect, contractor, greatly intigued by soil microbiology when I discovered it with Elaine 5 + years ago. My 4H experience didn't know microbiology. Or compost tea. Just chicken shit. With CT I could have taken all the prizes at the county fair, Hopkins Minn.
   
A very capable guy, Giovanni Anachini, came to me with a great idea for compost.
He made it work. Turned out the best cleanest highest quality compost from over- shelf- life- groceries, wood chips, other valuable stuff. With free rent we traded to him, he could not make if financially. Not his fault. City subsidized systems for getting rid of yard waste etc, put lousey "compost" near free, to the market. The same condition exists in dairyland. More cow poop than there is place to put it. Composting is at the sellers cost. Urgent that it get composted rather than applied 'green'. But it probably costs more applied than the chemical crap that is ruining our land and our health. (IMO Compost is hard to use for financial reasons. High cost of handling.
 
So to break out of a financial bind I bought and gave a $5,000 Brewer to the Ground Up group to try to let CT help us find a financial way to pursue this planet saving objective. Within weeks it was clear that pumping water and microbes repeatedly thu a centrifigul pump and some other evident defects in the $5,000system, this was not the right tool. It sits unused today.
 
I imagineered a much simpler, gentler system, developed and tested. The first tests were a bit better than the expensive machine. Simple easy to assemble, use, dissassemble and clean. cheap - less that 1/8th the cost of what I had bought. . Easy to copy. Used most any container as a tank. It was not intended to impress any board room that needs to be impressed by cost, shiney labels and complexity. It was intended to make ACT available to anybody that wanted to do ACT. At a price equal to what they could buy the stuff at to make it themselves. That is my only protection. Copiers are welcome. My first goal is to save the Planet. Organic agriculture do that.
 
Testing to prove that it was good, I learned a lot. I learned that you can overload any system with enough rich compost and nutrients. It proved that testing to find safe aerobic recipes is expensive. At least $ 10,000 in SFI testing alone not including the cost of testing at my end. My pockets were much deeper when I started this crusade.
 
But now the testing is suspect? Not in my mind but in some of the List remarks. I can say that testing predicted that the ACT was good and that it would help make better yield, better produce. Did it? The enthusiasm that seems to turn off a bunch of "scientists" of this list - The enthusiasm is frequent and heartening. And damned important. What is going to sell organic agriculture? Horticulture or better more profitable crops? I don't have to have a degree in Horticulture to recognize better garden, better field , better landscape, better turf. Has field testing been done with great scientific control? No. We recognize that to be a need. Before and after. Careful. All things equal except the ACT Who is the strongest advocate of such field testing? Who has done the best job of that kind of testing to back what her lab tries to prove so we don't have to wait a couple years to learn the quality of the ACT we make? Dr Ingham. The hardest working , most effecti
 ve
 teacher I have ever known. Does she know everything? Ask her. She will be the first to explaint that we will never know everyting about natures systems. And some of us will know more about some aspects of organic agriculture than others. Marketing a product and making it financially and physically possible may be just as important as the horticulture or any other science.
 
Whats your hang up Mike? Afraid that while others plunge ahead every one doing it differently, everyone getting fair to great results that YOU will ruin your field? What has all that other stuff done to your fields? There is a big difference between reading about a great idea and putting it to practice. The difference? WORK. It takes a wee bit of courage and a bunch of work to get started.
 
Moving from one model to a little Bitti for research. It took work. Moving from the first model now to 500 g models and much larger - aimed at making a difference in big ag. Work! Designing so that they cost the farmer no more than if he bought the parts and build his own. Because they are so simple, he can. Testing a 500 gallon unit costs far more than testing a 5 gallon unit. Testing takes a farmer that has guts to risk a thousand acres of his crop to prove that Elaine is right. That the reports from others who have taken the risk with good results are turning in honest reports. Elaines before and after pics tell a story. By the way Yes ACT tests can be cooked to get high numbers. We know how. We didn't. WE wanted to know the facts too. It's dam hard to cook a test on 1,000 acres. Or in a vineyard or golf course. If the SFI tests were cooked to get high numbers how would we explain negligeable results to that farmer? Besides I didn't come wired that way.
 Confused
 and alarmed? Not a bit. Just a bit angry.
 
Theres many years of effort and savings and enthusiasm gone into supporting this List That is not well understood by some. It takes vital science to develope the knowledge but without the next stage called implementation, the science will lie as dormant as bacteria at absolute zero. If this List wants to stop at the science alone it will, I predict, become dormant.
 
Bob, of Bob's Brewers. My web site is under reconstruction. It will show the company as it is now and as it intends to be. The products it is and will offer. It will show current testing from SFI., Oregon and NY. If any other test labs come on the scene and prove reliable i will send tests there to verify SFI. But the real tests are what Judi reports from her apple club, what Mike reports from his field some day, what Kevin reported from his golf course in Anchorage, What Paul reports from New York, Ray f rom Idaho, what others report from Texas, Costa Rica, South Africa, Australia, Iowa, Pennslvania, Florida, Oregon, Washington, & other states, no matter who's machine or what nutrients they used to make the ACT. Big fields will be important tests. That is where the erosion will stop, where irrigation will be reduced, where CO2 to the atmosphere will be reduced and carbon sequestered, where disasterous diseases will become unknown, where the crops that will make a
 difference in our nations health will grow. ACT is happening all over the world. It will grow to prevail because it is IT IS better. And I am proud as hell to be some part of this move. Bob
 
This not veiled ad is intended to counter a lot of negative messages, to support ACT and every facet, farmer, maufacturer and the science that started it all and it ain't Sunday.
.


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Received on Sun Dec 21 2003 - 05:07:55 EST

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