My step grandfather told me a story long ago how his mother sent him down to the fish cleaning station, used by the Lake Michigan fishing crowd, to gather discarded fish heads for soup. Myself, as a young boy, paid particular attention as he leaned in and made a point of all the meat left in a fish head!

It is all about the nutrients, the minerals. Bones, scales, eyes, skin, and flesh, all contribute. Now I know my grandgather was right, and he would be pleased to learn fishheads will also break down in a compost pile, and provide nutrients for my backyard plants and trees!

So now I will tell you this is only my third oxygenated compost pile, since July, but the first steaming heap I have used fish heads as a nitrogen catalyst. 

It is true that composting containers warn against using meat in their bins and tumblers, and rightly so, as any method not allowing oxygen into the pile will slowly rot the meat into a description not worthy of mention. Lets just say one would not want to be near it (unless you are a possum).

But with oxygen, I recently learned while participating in a PDC, that all types of meat can be used effectively, with just a little bothersome smell in the first turning. I was aiming to find out for myself!

So here are the ingrediants of this current heap I am working on. 1/3 aged cow manure for nitrogen. 1/3 sawdust for carbon. And 1/3 green mineral-rich material consisting of the leaves and stems of wild yarrow, goldenrod, pigweed, and burdock.

Oh yes, and two other ingrediants; salmon heads placed in a ball of comfrey! As instructed, I situated the ball on about a foot high of the aforementioned mixed materials, then heaped up another three foot of material above the fish and comfrey ball, allowing the ingrediants to gravity fall off the edges.

Four days later I carefully picked my way around the compost pile, shoveling the outside away and starting a new pile close by. I observed no smells though most of the pile, only stopping (quite often actually) to pull on the large stems from the green material. Since I already had them in hand, I snapped them into smaller pieces.

Until I reached the center, one shovel unlocked the aroma of compost-steamed salmon heads and comfrey. Not a bad smell, but to a composting permaculturalist, it was an inviting smell of high quality food!

One other observation, in four days the fish heads were gone...