That is Awesome ! !
Jump all over that and be THANKFUL ;-)
VERY THANKFUL

Here is a link that might be useful: New Compost Bins Woo Hoo ;-)

I believe the nutrients become more concentrated with age.

LUCKY CUSS !!!! I think that the nutrient level evens out as composting becomes complete. Maybe higher nitrogen when fresh, but that black composted material is pure gold! If I'm not mistaken, compost functions not so much as a fertilizer [in the commercial NPK sense], but as an enabler of the soil organisms [which prosper when compost added to soil], which are then the 'mother's milk' to plant roots.
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BTW ... how does this material smell? Sweet and 'woodsy' is supposed to be the test of 'doneness' ...

BTW are there earth/compost worms in this material?

Also, do I understand that your garden will be 100' long DEEP PLANTING BEDS? When I first read it, thought it was 100' deep....YIKES!Next question you would ask, from deeeep into that DEEP bed, would be about nutrient level of magma. [LOL] [Seymour's book is among my favorites]

Yahoooo! So I really AM looking at a gold mine here! I believe my contact said the pile looked like rich black dirt but he didn't mention the smell. He said it was mostly manure, straw, and some shavings so the C:N ratio might be way heavy on the nitrogen. It might not even matter at this point. What do you all think?

Heck, I've got room on my property to take the entire pile. The only problem would be loading and transport. I've got an IH454 with a front end loader at my place for moving/turning but this guy has nothing but a shovel. He says he's looking into tractors right now but may not get one until later this year. If I can get this stuff to my property I'll have all the compost I'll need for a LONG time. Heck, I could even toss it into 50lb bags and sell it right? What's a 50lb bag of aged compost go for?

@borderbarb - Yes, I'm actually planting lava carrots which require at least 2 miles of loose earth crust on top of an active magma pocket. ;D
I realized as soon as I posted it looked like my beds were 100' but I figured you all would know what I meant.

I used a bunch of thoroughly composted horse manure - at least 5 years old - last year in my garden. It looked like peat moss. It smelled good and had alot of fibrous material in it. I received it after I had already planted most of my garden so I used it as a mulch. The problem with horse manure is that there can be a lot of seeds in it. Horses don't have as many stomachs as cows so they aren't as likely to kill weed/grass seeds. When I watered my garden the mulch turned into a chia pet. No matter, I just mulched over top of the horse manure with shredded leaves. Worked into the soil should be OK, but there will be seeds in there.

As a followup, I rented a dumping landscape trailer and the guy with the manure borrowed a friend's tractor w/ loader.

Long story short... this stuff is AWESOME!

The manure in the center of the pile may have been 10 years old but we never got that far in. I took about 15 yards and barely made a dent in the MASSIVE pile. Most of it was well broken down and extremely rich, a few apples here and there but certainly fine to lay down on my beds. I spread it with my tractor and then tilled it all in. Over the next few weeks I tilled several more times to kill the weeds and grass that kept popping up and when I planted it was pretty clean. The garden has sprouted and I'm just seeing typical grass and weeds that were expected so I don't think much came in with the manure. I've started my own compost pile with our sheep, goat, and chicken bedding but I plan on taking 20 yards every year from this guy if he ends up buying a vehicle to load it. I didn't get as much as I wanted this year (ran out of time and the trailer blew a tire) but I'm thrilled to have what amounts to an endless supply of aged manure. Cheap is good, free is better! ;D

Make sure to ask him if anyone used lime on the manure at any time over the years. Its somewhat common for stables to use lime to control the flies on horse manure. High lime content could cause you a lot of problems unless you have highly acidic soil. Might not be a bad idea to double check the pH if you have way to do it.

How long, and how, manure is piled up will determine what nutrients might be there. An improperly piled pile of manure exposed to rain can loose most of the nutrients throught leaching by the rain (one of the ways CAFOs cause pollution of our waterways) although a pile of manure that readily sheds rain, or os covered to prevent rain from soaking in and leaching nutrients, may have nearly the same nutrients as fresh, just not quite as readily availabel.

The source was a private residence and I don't think they used any lime. The pile wasn't covered but was literally 10'high and 40' wide. Just looking at and smelling the stuff and I could tell there's still plenty of nutrients. My garden is really taking off so I'm happy!

Any weed seeds would have come from the fresher manure that was added recently. The old stuff in the center of the pile would have already digested any weeds seeds long ago.

The only time it has aged too long, is when somebody else gets it before you do.

If the manure is in a short/shallow pile, some of the nutrients can be leached away by rainfall. If the pile is more than a couple of feet deep, only the outside crust of the pile will have suffered any leaching. The rest of the pile will absorb the nutrients that rainwater washes down from the top. The weeds you seen are only from the very freshest manure that has not composted and heated up.

GREEN WITH ENVY.....
Greg

Yes, when any manure sits for alone time, it beaks down & changes to compost. It is no longer manure, a plant can use it & grow to produce more, then with out the compost. If you are lucky it is in stage two, HUMUS- which is more compact, so it is easier to move. You are lucky.
Give thank to the compost God & enjoy!

MYSELF I THINK A TEST OF YOUR HORSE MANURE ,MAY BE A GOOD IDEA, SOME PEOPLE HAVE THERE HORSES USING MEDS, JUST TO BE SAFE

Livestock medications would have little to no effect on the soil food web, much less on any vegetables. I wouldn't worry about this. Testing manure for livestock medications would be a very complicated business anyway. You'd have to know exactly what was used in order to test for it, and the actual tests - if you could even find a lab to do them - would be hundreds of dollars. Much more involved than a soil nutrient test. Luckily you don't need to be concerned about it.

One thing that actually DOES warrant concern is persistent herbicides that may be used on hay fields, and have been shown to persist into manure and damage plants until they decompose after a couple of seasons. It's always good to ask your manure source if they are using picloram or chlorpyralid, or getting hay from someone who is. Not really a risk to humans, but it can damage your plants.

damonstealth... You lucky sod, you.

It would be nice to have a follow up if you are still around and haven't lost sight of your house and your computer, what with all the growth from that lovely old pile of horse manure.

I would like to ask a related question. We bought two truck beds full of two year old manure, filled our beds with it. Until now, I just thought it would be really great soil. Now I’m a little nervous. I read in a previous post that it could be dangerous for low lying veggies. This is exactly what we were seeding. It didn‘t smell bad at all is mostly a rich, dark black with a few apple found here and there. I guess I want to know if two years is aged long enough and is it a health hazard? Do I need to use lime? It has not been tilled. It’s just a private farm with a large pile out back.

Thank you, I’m new to all of this! Yes, that’s what I was talking about.

I'm working a horse manure pile that's maybe 15 or more years old. The only thing I know is that they haven't added anything to this pile for two years. The pile is on a steep slope and they add to it on top which is at the level of the barns second floor. This pile could be even older than that; I don't really know. At that time they begged me to remove the remains of the previous pile and I did take some; but then I decided that the newer pile would likely have a higher nutrition level so I finished off that load from the newer, 15 year old, pile. But I can confirm that I couldn't tell any difference in results from either pile. They both grow wonderful crops.

However I grew up learning not to grow root crops and leafy veggies or anything like bush beans that may hang in the manure/manured soil. So I follow that teaching. I add manure to the soil that I plan to grow these crops the previous fall. To tell you the truth I think if you added manure and grew a crop in that soil the previous season the soil would still grow a nice crop this year. If the soil was raw clay last year before you added the manure I would want to add more this year.

Hopefully you have some compost for the root crops and leafy veggies and perhaps you could shift to pole beans to resolve that conflict. You should know that if you use manure as a soil amendment that you won't need any other fertilizer that and perhaps even the following year.

"However I grew up learning not to grow root crops and leafy veggies or anything like bush beans that may hang in the manure/manured soil."

https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/green-manures

If it is not green/fresh manure then you do not need to worry about burning crops.

Sixty days for above ground crops & ninety days for below ground crops.

Always wash your vegetables, before using, a good mulch should keep the humus/compost off you above ground fruit & save water, suppress weeds also.

While I won't begrudge anyone who wants to be more careful about food safety and manure, I really don't think it should be a problem for @hu-randomnumber.

Food safety guidelines are generally about using 'fresh' (not well composted) manure, and IIRC are generally minimum recommended in the range of 4 to 6 months before harvesting. Horse manure that's been outside for two years or more should be perfectly fine. (General 'wash carefully' guidelines apply anyway - even compost from kitchen scraps or just soil have bacteria).

Also, if you look around, manure application guidelines are mostly about cow manure - because it's most often from large dairy operations (where the average size in USA is something like 4000 head). That's where the commercial scale manure is.

Horse manure is (in my opinion) less of an issue - digestive systems are completely different - more 'roughage' and more air in horse manure, mixed with drier bedding, and much more likely to compost well. And horse operations are smaller and manure much less likely to be held in a slurry pond or wet pile with no air.

At any rate, again, to each his own, but personally I'd have zero specific concerns about well-aged horse manure as described in a vegetable garden, for me or my children.

There's more to eating than food safety guide lines and should be's. Who wants to eat a salad with 60 day old horse manure. It's unappetizing. I wouldn't suggest you tell your kids that the black stuff in the salad is horse schitt but it's safe cause they schitt it out 60 days ago. And you may have a guest that has a suppressed immune system.

It's possible that I may use as much manure in my garden as anyone on this site with a home garden but sometimes you just have to act responsibly.

You can grow good crops improving raw clay with nothing but peat which is widely available to grow root crops and leafy veggies until this fall when you can start preparing for next year.

Who said anything about 60 days old? Two years old was the number mentioned above.

And whatever, John - anyone who buys anything from a store has eaten and eats food that's grown with manure. As has most of humanity throughout human history - but again, whatever.

Again, if you prefer to not use manure, that's fine, but no need to frighten people with exaggerated fears of poop in their veggies.

armoured - You need to do some rereading:

Joe said: "Sixty days for above ground crops & ninety days for below ground crops."

Also it was me who wrote about the two piles of horse manure and how I couldn't tell any difference in crops grown from the 15 year old pile and the one that preceded that pile.

But lets not forget that the self appointed expert on this site recommends human manure "well composted" for two weeks. "A good two weeks."

I'm the self-appointed expert on this site, and I have never discussed human manure. If I were to worry about stuff, I'd be far more grossed out imagining the slug that might have traversed my beet greens the night before, leaving behind his or her persistently clingy trail of mucous, than I would be to consider that they might have touched the composted manure I use to grow them.

@John, apologies, due to the weird way this site works I wasn't seeing, it seems, an interim post in there.(Which I didn't understand as the link is to green manures i.e. cover crops and the post refers to 'burning' crops, which wasn't the issue raised).

Anyway returning to simple point/question raised: no need to worry about horse manure that's been piled up for two years. All garden vegetables should be washed carefully.

armored - Apology accepted. Most likely OP's pile and my old pile are safe to use on most any crop. However some of us are more careful, and some of us have to be more careful. While the family is enjoying their salads is no time to learn that Uncle Joe is on an immune suppressant and he's already taken seconds.

To each his own.

"You should know that if you use manure as a soil amendment that you won't need any other fertilizer that and perhaps even the following year."

Not necessarily true. It will depend on soil composition, what the soil analysis is before adding manure and what kind of crops you are growing. Supplementation with a fertilizer may well be necessary even with using manure as topdressing or as a soil amendment.

@john - as I first wrote, I don't begrudge anyone's decision to be more careful - no complaints there. Just saying those personal decisions to be careful well beyond even the strictest guidelines - well, implications pretty obvious.

We've been here 15 years. I have never added any fertilizer to the lawn or to the gardens. I have grown new gardens in raw clay amended with peat, and raw clay with horse manure or mushroom compost. I don't bag out the grass clippings so the lawn and then the gardens I've made in previous lawn locations has had nothing else added. The sod in the lawn is less than an inch thick.

Even though I've never added fertilizer I have manged to grow a few 14 foot tall tomato plants. Admittedly the lawn ain't the greatest lawn, but with all the clover and dandelions it stays green thru the summer and the winter; while neighbors lawns dry out or brown out for the winter.

The NPK values for manure have about the same as bagged fertilizers if you're willing to adjust for the vast increase of weight. The manure is a slow release fertilizer and will last out this year and into future years.