6 replies to this topic

[kingfreddys]

a foaf wants to pastuerize way more straw than can fit into a regular rubbermaid, how should he do it?

[relic]

Well, if you're serious and the title implies you are. You need a way to chop large amounts of straw first. You definately don't want to chop an entire bale by hand. You could rent or borrow a chipper for this. Then you need to get yourself a clean 50 gal drum and a natural gas or propane burner to heat it. You will also need to fabricate a strainer of some type out of expanded steel or something similar that is strong enough to take the weight of the wet straw. This will have to welded together and a method of lifting it out of the drum incorporated. Of course it will have to fit inside. Google 'pasteurize straw oysters' or similar and you will find examples.

There is also another method that involves using hydratred lime(mason's lime) to do the actual pasteurizing instead of heat. If you search you will find info on this method.

[hyphaenation]

I do it this way ...

http://mycotopia.net...g-pictoral.html

With that much straw its recommendable to get something like a black & decker bush-hog blower/vac mulcher that can make short work of shredding the straw.

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[crazy1]

agreed Hyph, the straw will need to be chopped up first.
Now here's a thread I did on how I do it for the oysters I grow.
It's pretty simple, and there's not a lot of $$$ needed to do it.
But you'll need a burner set up and drum as relic stated.
But it really doesn't need to be 55 gal. You could go with a smaller barrel like 35 gal if thats all you can get.

http://mycotopia.net...yster-grow.html

good luck

[gsmith1981]

i bought a hedge trimmer for $33 to chop straw. i forgot about hyph mulcher:( and i work at lowes duh

[sandman]

http://mycotopia.net...method-pdf.html

[RITTER]

I usualy take a plastic trashbarrel & put 1/4 of a bail in at a time & take a weedwacker and go to work! I do short burst of the throttle so I dont make it into to small of peices! alot better than scisssors!!!! lol