Ain't No Mountain High Enough

This past week I have been becoming rather too well acquainted with the various stages of decomposition of animal poo. It’s a world that many of us never venture too far into, possibly for fear of becoming so enthralled by the complexities of dung ecology that we become a bore at parties, banging on about the pros and cons of cold versus hot composting, lecturing others on the chemical virtues of cow manure, haranguing close friends on the necessity of mixing animal waste with kitchen scraps, dead vegetation and straw to the correct proportions. Let’s hope I don’t find myself slipping down that path (metaphorically or literally).

Down by the large polytunnel, just next to the gate to the hay field, there is a huge pile of poo. It has been added to several times a day for months, if not years, with dung from pigs and cows, along with the straw that the animals were standing on when they felt the urge to do a number two. Wheelbarrows of the stuff are carted over and run up a gangplank to reach the pinnacle of the mountain before emptying. 

It was only last week that the penny dropped that there was no plan for this poo tower. I had thought that a local farmer came over each year to collect it but apparently last year’s collection was a one off. So a new plan was swiftly formed. Surely under the surface of the pile there would be loads of fantastic fully-decomposed muck that we could extract and dig into the soil of our various vegetable patches, thereby giving them a massive shot of vital potassium, nitrogen and phosphorous in the most natural and organic way possible. Why not clear the area next to the poo mountain (where some proper compost and some useless subsoil was sitting), shift the top layer across, and get at the good stuff?

So we cleared the area next to it, carting the subsoil over to fill an unused duck pond, then clambered on top of Faeces Hill and began tossing spades of the stuff across. The mountain had somehow extended itself across a higher area behind it, so the amount of work ahead was not insignificant, to put it mildly. Slowly we discovered to our great pique that what we hoped to be jolly rotten good stuff underneath was actually mostly not. It had not had any oxygen down there, having never been turned, so had generally remained a kind of compressed decayed straw.

Adapting to this unfortunate turn of events, we decided we had to move the entire mountain across to the area next to it, thereby giving it a chance to breathe and hopefully decompose in time for next year. Any properly rotted goodness that we found, of which there was some, we would take to the nearest soil bed. Once completed, a new fresh pile could begin where the last one had been. Our project was now Herculean and in fact is still in progress despite having several people toiling away on it, getting muckier and smellier by the day. 

Interesting artifacts are emerging along the way. I have dug out what seem to be clumps of walnuts, no doubt having fallen from the walnut tree just above. A couple of what might be marble slabs were uncovered today, along with a paintbrush and an empty bird feeder bag. Excitement bubbled over as we found a buried plastic marker used for denoting what type of vegetable is sown next to it, and crucially, when. The date was January 2010 which enabled us to estimate the age of the manure it lay within, at about two years old. Tony Robinson would be proud. 

One day in the far distant future, when our work will finally be done, we will pat our grandchildren on the heads and chuckle ruefully at how way back in 2012 it had all started so innocently - simply searching for some good dung to put on our land.