The Compost Cycle

1. Take responsibility. Evaluate your lot and determine how to clean and provide defensible space around your home or business. Contact the New Mexico State Forestry Department at (505) 354-2231 or Rick Delaco, Urban Forester, (505) 258-4343 for free information and a courtesy evaluation.

2. Contact a local tree cutting service for a site bid on professionally cleaning up your space and arrange for pickup service of forest organic waste from Sierra Contracting.

3. Sierra Contracting, Inc. can haul the forest organic waste products including small diameter trees, slash and pine needles to their near-by facility in Ruidoso Downs. If you haul your waste to the site, Sierra Contracting offers free dumping for Village of Ruidoso residents (must accompany a current water bill).

Sierra Contracting, Inc.Composting Operation.

4. Once at Sierra Contracting, the organic forest waste products are deposited into a tub grinder and ground into small particles, then placed in a wind-row.

5. Water is added as an innoculant to begin the decomposition of the materials. The compost process starts immediately.

6. Pellitized urea is added as a nitrogen source.

7. The composting materials are stirred frequently.

8. More water is added during the composting time, which usually takes 6 months.

9. Temperatures are probed daily. As the composting materials are broken down, heat is generated which must be monitored and cooled by stirring and adding moisture.

10. When the internal temperatures drop, an indication that the composting process has reached near completion, then microbal levels* are checked by a certified monitor through the New Mexico Environmental Department.
* see a lab analysis

11. Upon completion of the composting process, the materials are screened and stored either in bulk for commercial usage or bagged for the retail consumer market.

12. From the dirt and plant-life that began, to the process of growing and aging, into the heat of regeneration - a rejuvination occurs.

>Sierra Forest Compost recycles Lincoln County's wild fire threat.