AgPhd Compost vs Manure #1074

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Darren and Brian Hefty discuss the benefits and challenges of using both compost and manure fertilizer.

Cattle and hog manure an be spread fresh or it can be composted. In short, composted manure smells a lot less, and weights less due less water so you can spread more nutrient with less trips, but it takes a lot longer for the nutrients to be absorbed into the soil. Fresh manure delivers nutrients with a punch, especially liquid manures that get down in the soil or are injected with a drag line. Interesting, short video.

Opinion | As Canadian Smoke Darkens the New York Sky, The Future is Clear – The New York Times

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Opinion | As Canadian Smoke Darkens the New York Sky, The Future is Clear – The New York Times

My father, who died of lung cancer, used to say that as soon as people inhaled their first cigarette, they immediately knew, if they weren’t in denial, that they were harming themselves.

I felt the same way on Tuesday in New York, my eyes itching and my nose burning and the taste in my throat like I’d swallowed a charcoal bonbon. This had to be bad. The sky wasn’t quite the apocalyptic orange of Australia’s Black Summer or San Francisco’s Day the Sun Didn’t Rise, but it had grown confrontationally eerie, enveloping the city in a blanket of toxic smog.

Until now, if people in the green and leafy Northeast looked at arid Western cities covered in smoke from wildfires, they could say, that can’t happen here, thank God. On Tuesday, it did: For a moment, New York’s air quality was worse than it was in Delhi, the infamous pollution capital where average life spans are reduced more than nine years by particulates in the air. By evening, New York had registered the worst air quality in the world among major cities. And staying indoors may not provide perfect protection.

While winds are fickle, and it can be hard to predict where smoke will travel in the days and weeks ahead, there isn’t any reason to think the Canadian fires coughing this smoke up into the atmosphere will be stopping anytime soon.

I’m hoping this is not a trend 🌫️

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While it’s probably a short term meteorological phenomena with the blocking low off the Maine coast funneling all the Canadian wildfire smoke, it’s probably no coincidence that we are getting dumped on with a ton of wildfire pollution the year of Canada’s worse wildfires.

We used to think of wildfires and smoke they produce as mostly a western problem. It sucks to be them, we told ourselves. We all enjoy watching a freak show until it hits us personally. The truth is that is mostly a short term nuisance for most of us, except for those who have cardiac arrest and are hauled off in the meat wagon to never return.

The real question is this a one on phenomena that occurs every few decades like last happened locally in 2002, though this event probably was more serious with many air pollution meters pegged at their maximum setting, in what is being called the worse Canadian wildfire season ever. But humans have short term memory, and reporting and sensing of pollution has never been better.

It’s hard to dispute climate change is making wildfires more common, and that’s not just an activist talking point. Last summer and the year before we seemingly had a record number of gray summer days from high in the atmosphere wildfire smoke – and some brilliant sunsets to boot. But maybe because we are noticing it more from increased reporting in the press.