Well, that's a new one and it fits perfect!

Lol I thought so. I have seen buffaloam at natural grocerers. And it is quite pricey. I probably have the equivalent of several hundred dollars worth.

One reason that Buffaloam is so pricey is because it is organic and because it is tested in accordance with the standards of the American Composting Council. I''m pretty sure they have to do that testing to maintain their OMRI certification. The company surely is passing along the cost of the testing to the consumer. They age the compost for two years before they sell it. I am not sure why it would require such long composting but that's what they do. It might be necessary to compost for two years to get any/all pathogens and heavy metals out of the compost before they test it/sell it.

You can make a great compost from all that buffalo manure! The one time that I used local manure (our second year here) that wasn't fully composted and aged, we had about a gazillion weeds to pull all summer long. I knew they came in the cow manure because they only popped up in the beds where I used it and not in the beds where I didn't, and there were some different weeds from the usual ones we had here on our place.

I was going to age it. Guidelines for market gardens say no manure can be used 120 days prior to picking. I am going make piles and put a stake with dates so I remember which to use first. But I will try some of this in my flower bed. I am going to use cardboard and wood chips in there so that will help with unwanted sprouts.

The stakes with dates are a great way to keep track of how long the piles have aged. I actually did get a surprise plant from the manure. It was a native plant that I wanted but it just came up in places where I didn't want it. So, at least that one desirable plant arrived with the manure, along with a million unwanted ones.

About that same time I was dealing with the unwanted weeds from that manure, the news first broke about gardens being killed in Washington State and Pennsylvania because of herbicide carryover in compost and I started turning down all the manure offered to me by local friends who ranch. They pretty much all either use those persistent herbicides themselves, have neighbors who use them on adjacent properties (so at least some drift is likely), or they purchase bales of hay that might have been sprayed with them. I continued using old spoiled hay given to me by people who I knew did not spray for another few years. The last time I brought in hay from elsewhere was 2010 and I composted all of it for several years before I used it. It is a lot harder to come up with compost made only from plants on our own property, but except for any herbicide drift that might occur, at least we know our stuff is clean.

A couple of years ago, somebody (I don't know who and I'm not pointing any fingers, but I'm pretty sure I know who did it) had a major herbicide spill---it looked like a tank leaked---perhaps in the roadway and the herbicide ran into our bar ditch and the area all along the road there. A large-ish area, around 20' x 30' of all the plants died and there was additional plant death where the stream of herbicide ran along the bar ditch towards the creek. Normally I have poppies and other wildflowers growing there for the wildlife and to beautify the bar ditch at least in early spring before the grasses are growing so rampantly. It was many weeks before anything regrew in that spot, and what regrew was only grass and not any of the wildflowers. Because we mow that area in the summer months and collect the clippings for mulch or the compost pile every time we mow, we had to change our practices. We didn't collect the clippings down there for the rest of that year or the following year, figuring it was better to be safe than sorry. We cannot control how others around us use or misuse herbicides, as you know all too well, but I still try to do everything possible to keep their crap from affecting our plants. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle.

Dawn