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.

About Common Materials

Alfalfa is a protein-rich perennial legume mainly grown as animal feed.  On favorable soil it develops a deep root system, sometimes exceeding ten feet.  Alfalfa draws heavily on subsoil minerals so it will be as rich or poor in nutrients as the subsoil it grew in.  Its average C/N is around 12:1 making alfalfa useful to compensate for larger quantities of less potent material.  Sacked alfalfa meal or pellets are usually less expensive (and being “stemmy,” have a slightly higher C/N) than leafy, best-quality baled alfalfa hay.  Rain-spoiled bales of alfalfa hay are worthless as animal feed but far from valueless to the composter.

Pelletized rabbit feed is largely alfalfa fortified with grain.  Naturally, rabbit manure has a C/N very similar to alfalfa and is nutrient rich, especially if some provision is made to absorb the urine.