Manure Management

The weekend sun and warm weather screamed for barn cleaning. The frozen manure in the spreader and the snow in the garden said wait. Live on a farm and you learn the challenges of manure in winter. In an ideal world, the sheep and horses graze and deposit their manure in the pastures where it breaks down and fertilizes the soil. In reality, the animals like to congregate at the barn that offers shade on sunny days and protection from the wind and rain. Where they congregate, they also defecate. During the non-frozen months, we dump the chicken, horse and sheep manure into the spreader. When it fills – about once a month – my husband empties it. The manure is either dumped onto a manure pile quite a distance from the barn. There, it breaks down and we and others use it on gardens. The other option is to spread onto pastures, hay fields and crop fields. In November, the manure in the spreader froze. Ever since, we’ve been awaiting it to thaw. Live on a farm, and you learn to develop Plan B, Plan C, and so forth. In the past, Plan B usually involved spreading the horse manure in a thin layer on the nearby garden. Come spring, we worked it into the soil. As for the chicken house and sheep stalls, we used the European method of bedding – where we periodically spread a fresh layer of straw or shavings on top of the existing bedding and manure. Come spring, the bottom layer was usually composted. Plan C, in the past, was creating a manure pile near the barns. Snow changed those plans. Drifts still block access to the garden and nearby manure pile. The manure spreader is still frozen. And so we wait, knowing that in a few weeks the manure will thaw, the ground will firm up, and we’ll be in a mad rush to spring clean the barn.