Manure

 

 

 

 

                Manure.

 

Rosemary Farm

It conjures up many images and especially many feelings around the scent of it. Manure is more than just something to pitch off, pile up, drop in a bucket or spread real thin, it is instead a highway right to the core of our memory banks.






 I was thinking of this the day I visited Rosemary Farm Sanctuary (http://rosemaryfarm.org/) a couple of weeks ago. It is a place where horses destined for their end of days go to have some peace and possibly a second chance at a happy life. The owners, Dawn and Robert are lovely people and work hard every day to keep the farm running, the horses well fed and healthy, and for all the humans and the creatures on the farm to live a simple and happy existence.

The farm is located in the heart of the Catskill mountains. A babbling brook runs through the property and all around are gently rolling hills with trees that were just beginning to change color into what will surely be a brilliant display of autumn tones. There was a slight nip in the air but after hefting a few bales of hay the blood began to flow and warmth returned. Not to mention, seeing these amazing horses, each with distinct personalities all grateful for the chance to live peacefully after whatever hell was wrought on them before they came to Rosemary Farm - that quickly warms your heart and soul in on even deeper level. 

Dawn and Robert subscribe to their animals having a "free range" lifestyle. I love that! But, there is something that goes along with that...manure. Manure in places you don't imagine it to be. For the unobservant or squeamish to sh*t it can me quite the obstacle course. Of course, manure is organic all natural and nothing to be afraid of.

My friends here in Brooklyn just became parents (owners?) of 3 cute chickens. Kevin said to me that "Nowhere in any of the on-line threads or the How To books does it talk about how much chicken poop would be created by them." Of course, it goes without saying (but me being the one to always state the obvious) if one eats, one must sh*t. And so, we come back to manure.

Many would say, oh ugh, those smells- they make me want to gag.


Not for me, it is like home.


There is a comfort in those sweet earthy fragrances.

All manures have their own signature fragrance. Cow manure can be very sweet. Horse manure has low notes and is earthy like truffles, pig manure is sharp and little bit rancid and chicken poop, well, it smells like chicken!

Manure makes excellent fertilizer. My sister-in-law swore by goat manure for her garden. She never had a better crop than when she treated it with goat manure. The plants were huge and bore gigantic vegetables in abundance. And the asparagus was to die for! Ah, the magical powers of partially digested food, strained with stomach acids and pushed through a large intestine and then mixed with your soil.

Manure can be the first step towards a delicious delicacy. On a magical trip to Morocco, my friend Betsy and I saw some goats up in these trees just off the side of the road on the way to Essauoira. We exclaimed to our driver, "Good heavens, what are those goats doing in those trees?" Wazi; tall, dark, with a winning smile and who totally had a "thing" for Betsy (her with her petite green eyes and all) so wanted to impress us with his knowledge happily explained  that they were eating the nuts which contained the kernels that Argan oil comes from. The nuts do not break down in the goat's systems very easily so they reappear half consumed in the goat's manure. Traditionally, the Berbers then pick through the goat poop and harvest these half chewed and digested nuts. After a good cleaning (I hope) the nuts are pressed and viola! Argan oil is made! The moroccans cook with it, put it in their bathing products and in general highly prize it for it delicious taste, skin softening properties and medicinal benefits. We were quite put off - preferring our oils and skincare products to be poop free. Upon our arrival in Essauoira, our kind innkeeper presented us with some bread, olives and oil to dip the bread in."Specialty of the country!", he said proudly. Well, when in Rome...or Morocco, that is.

For me, manure is more than a fertilizer. More than a food product. Manure shapes my sense of what home is in the deep and lizardy part of my being. It conjures up images of a simpler, easier time. It takes me to my core and lets me take a peek of that little self that still resides there. When I am driving down a country road and come upon a freshly spread field with spring manure I am instantly transported back to my farm. It is a sweet and pungent smell not for the faint of heart. It is ripe, in some cases eye wateringly sharp in its odoriferousness. But, for me I am that little girl standing at the back of the barn looking out onto the open area between barn and field a place where the manure spreader sat. Where the cows freshly released from their stalls often raised their tales and dropped a patty. A place where the manure that was dragged from the gutter out of the barn and sent haphazardly into the spreader dripped and splotched onto any nearby surface. It is the natural cycle of a day on the farm. We weren't grossed out by it, gagged by it or appalled by it. It just was. It was just manure.
Funny how things change.

The Farmer's Daughter

I was born on a small farm in central New York State. Not upstate New York but central New York. 
In fact, the farm was located just six miles from the geographic center of the state. 

One might ask, "Where is the geographic center of New York?" Well, for your information, 
it is Pratt's Hollow. You can get there by taking the Bear Path.

In 1960, my Mother, Garda was a city slicker recently from Rochester. My father, Mid, had been born on a farm just two miles down the road from ours. He owned this farm with his brother, my Uncle Wes.

The farm was on the small side about 70 head of cattle. We had a bunch of acreage to grow hay and corn for the cows. 

And, we had a dirt runway out behind our house where my dad and my uncle took off and landed our three planes.

 My mother told me the farm had once been called the Cedardale Stock Farm. But by the late 1800's it was known as the Chenango Valley Holstein Stock Farm. It was the first Holstein Friesian cattle farm in the area. These livestock where highly prized and the land was rich and bountiful.

However, in 1960, our farm like many others in the area, struggled in a hardscrabble existence. We were poor, dirt poor but since no one had anything that anyone else didn't have, there was no comparing going on. 

I was born Tamara Lee Tackabury. 
In those days, so my Mother told me, when labor happened you would go to the hospital, they'd knock you out with some major anesthesia and when you woke up sick with nausea and a killer headache the nurses would plunk a wriggling baby into your arms and send you home.  
The Doctor told my mother that when they pulled me out with forceps my eyes popped open and I looked around the operating room with a critical eye and a loud wail.
The nurses in the hospital wanted my mother to give me the middle name of Nancy so my initials would be TNT because, apparently, I had quite the set of lungs on me in the nursery and kept waking up all the other babies. Apparently, I wanted to make it 
known, The Farmer's Daughter had entered this world.