Fruit tree safety near humanure compost pile

Does anyone know the pathogen potential for fruit from a tree about 8 feet from a humanure pile?  We had former summer “guests” who left a fairly untidy surprise pile (a worry in itself, one which we are dealing with). I’m wondering if they have also fouled our jam supply for the fall. Ugh. Thanks for advice.

Someone ripped a grumpy in your orchard? WTH, that's rude. Geez, sometimes I wonder about humans.

I think the risk is somewhere well below "zero" and "nil." I would relocate the grumpy and dig it into another non-food tree. And look into higher quality visitors in the future. Issued with a shovel and a couple of extra neurons to rub together.

It’s even worse, they were longer term visitors and were building a Jeavon’s style pile, which they decided to put near the plum tree instead of where we okayed it. And their enclosure was not what they said it would be either.  No more land sharing for us for a while ack.

Still think the plums will be okay?

The tree root will not absorb any bacteria/parasites from the humanure or even raw poop just sitting on the grass. But if you have flies or critters licking/eating touching the poop and then licking or touching your edible fruit, then that's a big concern. But you are going to wash and boil the edible fruit so all the microbes will be dead. The high concentration on sugar in the jam will also kill alot of microbes too.  

Ida Schwartz wrote:It’s even worse, they were longer term visitors and were building a Jeavon’s style pile, which they decided to put near the plum tree instead of where we okayed it.  Still think the plums will be okay?

1. A Jeavon's style pile is supposed to have *lots* of carbon - straw normally, all around and on top of the "gifts". If that was done, the plum tree should be fine for this fall, so long as you're not getting rain that could have splashed things on the fruit, or if you think the guests would have been messy while building the pile and splashed stuff. I've read a fair bit, and most suggest that tree crops that don't get splashed on are OK.
2. If you're making jam - what S Bengi wrote while I was composing my post! Wash your hands after picking, wash the fruit, then wash your hands again, then boil well. Jam temps are way higher than most microbes can live through.
3. You wrote:

who left a fairly untidy surprise pile (a worry in itself, one which we are dealing with)

Dealing with how? If it were me, I'd be adding stuff to get it up to a high temp/hot compost right were it is before doing something like trying to move it which would expose you to moldy gifts, rather than just gifts. The mess might deserve its own thread asking for ideas and please post pictures. We've got lots of people with lots of experience and there's no point risking illness if it can be avoided.

Given that these guys are messy, I am sure that you have already been expose to their strain of gut bacteria, and you have already been vaccinated/inoculated with it. Just like dealing with your own poop or your own baby poop, you are probably fine now. We usually get sick when our body is overrun by a lot of different strains not when we are hit with just one strain. Thus why we can drink raw milk from A local farm and not get sick every week. But if we were to visit, 50 different farms, from 50 different state and drank their raw milk we would probably get sick without the milk getting some type of treatment (heat/chemical/fermentation).

Just to be safe, dont serve any to your sister/etc when she comes to visit.

I would bury the offending poop and wash+rinse any potentially contaminated fresh fruit thoroughly, using soap and water. Poo germs do not have magical powers. The solution is simple, and effective.

Thanks folks, this is reassuring. There’s no way the fruit was splashed but I will wash it well anyway and will only use the fruit from this tree for jam.  I had a sense that the bacteria can’t transfer through roots to fruit but have seen so much caution in all the lit I’ve read that wanted your more educated opinions to hopefully override my own fecalphobia. Something about other peoples poop near your food source, yuck.

The main issue with the pile is that it’s just that, a pile, without an adequate barrier to keep interested critters out. The pile is hot and lots of straw in there so we’ve made a barrier of pallets on rebar around it, with a good buffer of straw, and we’re going to leave it alone til next summer. Then we’ll dig it in.

Next time, if there’s ever a next time, we won’t assume others have fully read the handbook, we’ll give detailed info and expectations. Like we offered with the kitchen compost heap. We won’t assume that anyone knows they can’t just dump their bucket in the orchard. I’m so mad...