Sustainability at the barn!

So I have not remarked on my composting lifestyle as much, so I did some reflecting. I tried to find some common ground to composting in this area. Living in a city area it is more groundbreaking to compost in a huge city, that is fast paced and so little the voice of the environment is taken into consideration, and that is why it has permeated my brain in such a way. I mentioned in my first post that to me sustainability is living off the map or "disappearing". I wanted to bring to light a place that has kept itself hidden pretty well. I ride at a barn with some Warmblood breeders who were long listed for the Olympics. Living on a farm and owning so many horses is very expensive, so as many barns in the area, they try to find other alternative to save and reuse resources. One way that they do so is by using their manure from cleaning stalls to fertilize the fields in which they grow hay. Every weekend morning that I am there I take the manure from cleaning a few stalls and dump it in a manure spreader. To replace shaving in the stalls, a truck comes from a logging company;s mill to bring in the scraps off the workroom floor. This nation is known for building most of its houses from wood, and owners here pay a cheap price for gas to get the shavings in. The owners here also compost their food from their own seasonal garden. It is small but provides a lot of food, so much that this summer, Carol had to get give me several heads of lettuce because she could never eat that many salads!!! and it was delicious! Richard has a creative fly trap in the barn invented by himself, and uses the flies for composting too. He says they are an excellent source of nitrogen. Carol has a lot of land, which means a lot of fencing to keep those young baby horses safe. Carol has a solar panel that provides electricity for the electrical fencing on the property. There are few hiccups in the road to sustainability for this farm, however impressive it may be. Water is a huge issue. You cant have horses without water. Even now, shavings are scares too, so the barn is constantly being savvy about water and other resources. Electricity is not an issue since they only need power for fencing, and the arena is a covered one with sky lighting and open sides to let light in, and most of the work is done during the day anyway. Only in case of a late night emergency will light be needed, in which case anyone can flip the switch. Even on gray, or darker days, riding can be done, and mucking will just have to be done in the dark for a while. Not a lot of people hear about these small happenings in communities because they arnt really loud anyway. This farm isn't fancy or overpriced or falsely advertised as an Olympic barn. It is as down to earth as it can be.