All around here are those big rolls of hay sitting out in the fields to be collected.

Suppose you got one of those and set it down on one of the flat sides, pulled out the center third or so of the roll, and used it as a depository for human waste, a la The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins? free online here

Good idea? Part of a good idea? Bad idea?

I would rather just have opinions from those who have read the book, if you don't mind.

Hey, Dagny -- we could spray it pink for deposits from the ladies bucket!

Sue

Hmmm, interesting idea. I'm assuming you are thinking it would be a good impromtu composting toilet. Knock it onto a flat side, dig out the center, put the "holy seat" in place and you are good to, er, go. I wonder how stable they are if you try to dig out some of the center hay for the deposit area? I'm guess you'd need to put some sort of mesh retaining wall around the opening. It'd really suck to have it collapse while in use! I also wonder how much waste one of these bales could hold?

Overall, I think it's an interesting idea, but there's definitely some engineering aspects that would need careful set up.

-Blast

I was thinking more along the lines of a "dump site" for the buckets, an easy compost pile, ready to go.

I think it would be pretty unstable to use as a throne proper. Lousy place to be wobbly, IMHO.

Sue

Those bales weigh about 1200 lbs. Machinery would be required to turn it onto it's side.

Sue is onto something of an idea here, though.

The whole bale, on it's side, would need to be encased in Hog Wire to hold it together.

Those round bales are not just sitting waiting to be collected, the reason farmers switched from square to round was so they could leave them in the field. Rain/snow will only penetrates the top 10% and runs off then so you save labor. Then they came out with wrappers that pick them up and wrap them in plastic so you can save that 10% and still leave them lay in the field.
They have different sized balers, I've never seen ones that were 1200lbs, can't have them quite that large in hilly areas, they are tied with baler twine and I can roll them myself and a couple men can tip them on their side.

Some of the bales here are wrapped almost completely in white plastic, but the most useful-looking ones just seem to have a plastic skin around the circumference, but the flat sides are not covered.

Sue

Here is an article on hay bales,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay

If you decide to try it the article states that in six years 74 people were killed in the US by haybales.

I think we should ask the cows first; on what they think about that idea.

I have found myself in a wet, cold environment with no shelter, and burrowed deep into a pile of hay. Rain did not get through, I dried out and remained toasty until time to move.

Yes, hay will work. I don't know about parting a rolled bale and making a deposit. Better to build a base of hay and then alternate between your deposits and layers of more hay.

In my experience you can use any loose or fibrous vegetable material as long as it is dry. Hay, straw (yes, there is a difference), dry leaves raked off the lawn, lawn clippings if they are left out in the summer sun and thoroughly dried, dried sphagnum moss. A bout the only thing that I haven't seen work well is pine straw. Even dried it doesn't decompose rapidly enough for composting toilet that gets used more than once a fortnight.

The dry, compressed peat moss sold in blocks at any garden center is what I store for emergency use. I like it because it is tightly compressed, dead-dry, and it comes in a nice cube that is sealed in plastic. It doesn't attract insects or rodents and seems to store forever.

The key is to keep the composting stack, a base of dry material and alternating layers after that, dry. The only moisture should come from the manure you add. Absolutely no urine, water, or, especially, cleaning or deodorizing products. You also need good ventilation. If your compost stack is sealed in a bag or container it will turn foul and it will smell worse than the manure you're trying handle. Odor is controlled by keeping oxygen available to the bacteria until your manure dries. Dry and largely decomposed the waste doesn't have any significant smell and can be stirred into the soil around your shrubbery at any convenient time.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I recall that stacks of hay bales, if still wet when bailed, can spontaneously combust. So while the visual is mighty entertaining, I'm not sure I would want to be adding moisture to the center of a large hay bale.

From Wikipedia: "Hay baled before it is fully dry can produce enough heat to catch on fire. Farmers have to be careful about moisture levels to avoid spontaneous combustion, which is a leading cause of haystack fires."

That way they can leave them sit there and not have to transport them to a barn. Its fun to watch those wrappers, funny thing on the back of the tractor picks them up and spins them around while wrapping them up. So you see this big haybale being spun around like the basketball on the showoff players finger.

'From Wikipedia: "Hay baled before it is fully dry can produce enough heat to catch on fire. Farmers have to be careful about moisture levels to avoid spontaneous combustion, which is a leading cause of haystack fires.'

Hay or compost piles have to be at least 7 feet square to catch fire. Most of those hay fires start in stacked hay in barns.

Sue

Around here, every couple of years, a barn goes up in flames because of spontaneous combustion. It's quite a task to extinguish a smoldering bale. It's hard to get water inside, which is where the fire is. The choice is to either let them burn or unroll them and hose them down.

Regarding using it to dispose of human waste, I'm positive that a round bale can handle far more than a good dose of human waste -- feces or urine. A round bale holds enough carbon to contain the smell and reduce a dead adult dairy cow to nothing more than the large bones in 30 to 40 days. <http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-1044.pdf>

Regarding the comment about someone digging into a round bale using a knife, I'm skeptical. The hay is tightly packed and all the stalks or stems are oriented in the same general direction. Cutting, or digging, your way into the heart of a round bale -- IMHO -- would be impossible.

My 21-year-old son laughed when I asked if he'd try to dig in to create a survival shelter. His advice: "Pull off a few layers to use as a blanket, then get on the downwind side." That would be far easier. And MUCH faster.

He also noted that if round bales (or any bales, or haystacks, for that matter) are around, a house or barn is not too far away.

Maybe the person lost in a blizzard dug into a haystack -- far less densely packed than a round bale.