Manure Pile Madness

This is going to be a quick post because I am writing before school. Wanted to share some of the excitement from last weekend.

On a beautiful blue sky summer weekend, Stacey had a friend come into camp to remove our manure pile. The aromas that filled the air around the barn were what I would call a mixture of fertile and ripe, an aroma that really spiced up the riding lessons I taught on Saturday and Sunday!

It's impossible of course to take all of our pile away because it is nearly 30 years worth of our dumping one wheelbarrow at a time. In fact, Stacey's friend brought a ten wheel truck and took out about 20 loads of wonderful black dirt to rebuild a field on his farm. He said at one point, "I never thought there was this much here!"

Anyway, he used a machine that I would call a backhoe but it was more sophisticated than that and he dug until his heart's content. Only problem was at one point his ten wheeler sunk into the pile - egads! - partly because it was still pretty wet from the wet summer we had. That was quite a sight. I think you'll agree. While this isn't the best photography in the world, it does show you the challenge these guys faced.

Well, getting that truck out of the pile was the adventure of all adventures. But with Stacey driving the truck and his friend operating the big machine, they finally succeeded.

I have to add that the horses handled all this noise and smell really well. Even Jax went into his stall when it was feeding time without flinching. He was a real trooper and that of course gave the horses permission to manage the situation with flying colors. You would have been proud of your four-legged friends.