I cleaned out my neighbors horse stalls earlier today and I removed a foot of horse manure that was so compressed that it was almost like digging through wood. Soft wood. It came up in layers and chunks. If I smashed it hard enough it would crumble, but never into dust, just smaller pieces. I got down to the bottom layer that looked like sawdust. She was with me and said that was the sawdust she put down 20 years ago when the barn was built. You can see the consistency of the removed manure, it's like little pieces of dried wood after I broke it up. This stuff has never really been wet, except for urine. I took it all outside, wet it all down, layered it with fresh sawdust and made 3 layers of that for a compost pile. Here are my questions.
1. What has all that horse manure turned into with the absence of water but with so many years to break down? And all that pressure compacting it from the horses. It was basically all accumulated around the walls of the stall. Like it had all been slowly pushed outward from the middle over many many years. Would it be humus? I would guess that it's maybe the same process as what happens in a compost pile exposed to rain, but much much slower? It'll still pick up moisture from the air maybe and that will keep some microbes alive to break things down?
2. Being that is so hard, but also so light in weight, unlike actual wood in weight and moisture content but like wood in hardness, how would it break down in a compost pile? Would it take longer? Would the non compacted horse manure all turn into soil while these harder pieces of manure remained.
I basically made the pile to answer these questions. Next year after it's cured and all I'll get it tested and try to figure out what the test tells me. Hopefully by that time I'll have learned more about soil testing. I've read through "The Intelligent Gardener" and it was extremely helpful. Right now I'm reading "Chemicals, Humus, and the Soil". It's from 1957 but in general it has taught me a lot about what's going on behind the scenes in the soil. It's actually been extremely helpful in helping me understand things better.
Thanks for reading and for any help or info offered. Here's some pics of the soil.
Edit: I spent 20 minutes proof reading and editing but never once looked at the title.