When life hands you poop, make compost

I love compost.  Compost is a beautiful thing.  I always have various compost piles in various stages of decomposition in various areas of the property.  

Before we bought this property, at our old suburban home, I had a proper compost pile.  It had three bins.  Each bin had three sides.  It was ventilated.  I turned it.  It was backbreaking work, but it made nice compost.  

Through lack of time, I have found a better way.  Since we moved the hogs to a confined area on the back of the property, there was a lot of poop piling up.  I wheeled an old wheelbarrow over to the pig pen, grabbed a shovel, and every evening at feeding time, I would take about 5 minutes to shovel as much of the poop into the wheelbarrow as I could.  I figured I could spare 5 minutes.  It went pretty fast.  It only took me about a week to fill the wheelbarrow.  I was intending to make a "proper" compost pile with it in the chicken's area - you know, proper C:N ratio and all that composty stuff.  The idea was that the chickens could scratch it up and incorporate it into the soil, while getting a free lunch.  Of course it never happened, because I have too much on my plate.

So the wheelbarrow sat there, outside the pig pen for a couple of months.  One day I noticed it was looking not so much like poop anymore.  I couldn't help myself - I grabbed the shovel and turned it a couple of times (old habits die hard).  I turned it one or two more times over the next couple of months, and today this is what I have:

Beautiful, fluffy, earthy compost!  And as an added bonus, when I started digging around in it (OK, yes, I enjoy digging through my compost with my hands :-D), I found  these little lovelies everywhere:

That, my friends, is a red wriggler, otherwise known as a composting worm.  How did they get into the wheelbarrow?  Who knows?  As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, life always finds a way.  What I do know is that they were busy turning that pig poop into beautiful compost for me!!  I also found several giant earthworms in there.  

The problem is the solution!!  Yaye permaculture!!  I got pig poop coming out my ears, I need compost, but got no time - perfect solution.  It's even already in the wheelbarrow so I can just wheel it wherever I need to use it.  This batch will be used to plant my fruit trees on my swale berms.  I'm going to have to start looking on Craigslist for more wheelbarrows......