Our New Holland manure spreader
The Manure Spreader: As long as our race has farmed we have struggled to return fertility to the land. Knowing our own part in that long history, we had our old manure spreader out of the equipment shed yesterday in an effort to regenerate a small field. Loaded multiple times from our carefully built manure pile, the spreader flung a large rooster-tail of rich compost out onto the land. A pile that often attracts a sinful and covetous eye from knowledgeable visitors to the farm. But only the ignorant, the morally corrupt or the brave of that crowd ask if they can have a truck load.
For it was born on this land and will be spread on this land.
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Reading this weekend: Perusing my newly acquired, 3600 page, three volume set of The Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by Liberty Hyde Bailey.
hi- I’m so glad I ran across your blog, it’s so insightful. I thought about this one awhile- yes it can be a problem. Ignorant? certainly not of the value of what they are asking for. Brave? only if they know that you know. I was taken aback by ‘morally corrupt’ but in the end yes, I think that works. They know how valuable it is, and they hope you don’t. That’s not nice.
Sally,
It is only morally corrupt when someone else asks me for our farm manure. If I ask…well, that is only common sense and common courtesy to say yes. 🙂
Thanks for commenting,
Brian
Thanks for the link back to your 2012 post on the purchase. A gem.
Trading subtle insults… always in fashion. Unfortunately the art of subtlety seems to be on the wane.
For the record – at home we had a wooden manure spreader, ground driven, and of moderate capacity (likely 75 bu; and Dad might be disappointed that I don’t have this particular detail committed to memory). I do recall that of the many different rate settings it was built with only a couple settings allowed the machine to operate. You basically had heavy, and REALLY heavy. It was best that one set it on heavy and if necessary, double back on a portion of a field to add a little once the load was down to a point where the rate was dwindling due to attrition. There is precision and there is pragmatism. Occasionally they occur at the same time.
It has settings? Actually our model has four settings. I assume they govern the speed at which the chain moves. And, I’m sure I could look it up…. Glad you liked the other piece on slinging “manure”.
Yes – look it up. And be careful not to ‘lock’ it up. A nice aspect of the wooden slinger… if you get a rock caught on the floor it usually just gouges a track along the floor. Of course if the fates are agin’ ye it will lock it up. And naturally the job of digging out a locked up manure spreader is not exactly what one imagines he is in for at the onset. It does give a whole new meaning to pooper scooper. Cuss words optional.