Our farm handles over 16,000 gallons of manure per day and our top priority is to return the nutrients from that manure back to the soil. We are very progressive in our manure management practices and we know that at some point in the not too distant future, the nutrients in manure will be too valuable to discard. To keep the soil productive we must return these nutrients back into the land.

In 1999 we began a new manure handling system called the On Farm Fertilization Recovery System™, OFFRS™. This system is a nutrient management system and goes beyond the traditional 'collect and spread' method of manure handling.

The OFFRS™ system combines the practices of solid waste separation, thermophilic compost, vermicomposting, aeration and biofiltration to process both the solid and liquid parts of the slurred manure from our 550 cow herd.

The new system concentrates the nutrients from the manure in a form that is easier for our operation to handle and resell as high quality compost or vermicompost.