Mucking around
By: Tony Hoyland
We seize the moment when we can, and on one bright Saturday in April there were three different people in this tiny hamlet all muckspreading, and there was horse, pig and cow dung on the ‘menu’ so to speak. I try to swap my horse manure for some muck from another sort of animal, as it isn’t best practise to put horse manure on a horse field. To do so increases the levels of internal horse parasites (intestinal worms) on the land, and if you are going to have any parasites on a field it is better to have some from another type of animal, as most worms don’t jump species. Horse manure is of course excellent in the garden, though I’m sure it does add a lot of weeds to the garden, as there are always some hay seeds off the stable floor that end up in the muck heap too.
Over the years I have experimented with a few different methods of spreading manure on the fields. I’ve forked it by hand into the back box of the tractor and driven around depositing it in small piles, and then on another day I spread the heaps out with a fork. This is just about bearable on an acre-sized field, but just the thought of having to do this over several acres is extremely depressing, even if it does give you a good workout. I can’t help feeling that work like this should be given to violent criminals as some sort of punishment. It is the sort of work one should do, at least just once in a lifetime, just so that you know what it is to work hard. In fact, thinking about it, there are a great many jobs that could be given out as punishment here on my little smallholding. Digging out the ditches by hand is another back-breaking job that springs to mind.
After a couple of years of the tiresome hand spreading method I up-graded and borrowed a Land Drive Muck Spreader. I forked the muck into the spreader, and then pulled it around the field with my MF 35. Forking it in was tedious, but driving around spreading it was fun, as I love the quiet simplicity of land drive implements. However the spreader had a tendency to throw the muck forward a bit, as well as sideways and backwards. This could be a bit dangerous, because if there was a stone in the muck it could potentially give you a right thwack on the back of the head. Killed by a muck heap eh, what way to go! Fears of this happening resulted in the other half suggesting that I wear a motorbike helmet while spreading, advice which I ignored, the result being that the entire back of my head was covered with horse ****. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been pig manure.
This year I went for an altogether different approach. I persuaded one of my brothers, who is a farmer, to pick some cow muck up with a digger, load it into a PTO powered muck spreader, and to spread it for me. This was an altogether more satisfactory arrangement, as I just had to open the gate, and then make some cups of tea, but it does mean that I have to pay him. But you can’t have everything in life can you?
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