The January Manure Wars

I like to use farm implements for a couple of years after they first break down because I’m frugal. Think of it as recycling by stubborn over-use.

I’ve been spreading horse manure over every inch of my farm for a few years. My small manure spreader rattles and hums in the summer, and pounds and pulverizes frozen horse manure for the rest of the year. I’m not easy on implements. Well, actually the job isn’t easy on them. The tires are almost bald and the hopper looks like I lob bowling balls in from the roof. I have to line the spreader with a tarp to keep the manure in until I’m ready to drop it, but then pulling the tarp out is impossible. It’s an imperfect process, but it’s mine. No amount of manure will change the fact that I live on a high-altitude desert prairie. Cactus grows here, there is no grazing. But I am filthy rich in horse manure, so why not? Wild flowers are coming back after years of drought. I’m letting the pasture become a bunny and salamander refuge. Think of it as tithing to Mother Nature.

This long explanation is to tell you I bought a new spreader. I giggle, I bray. It took a day to assemble, and it’s a minor manure miracle. A sultry steely gray-black body with an orange tongue. Ripping through my pasture, dragging it behind my ATV, made me feel young and thin.

Then the sky went dark and I have not used it since. Winter storms can appear and charge across the prairie without warning. January is famous for it and only an idiot would trust weather reports. Our prognosticator is Edgar Rice Burro. Donkeys are hard to fool. Not much snow when it’s this dry, but the wind has its way with us and we are powerless to resist. Goats shiver. Donkeys wear their ears lower. Horses become unpredictable. The only good thing to say about these storms is that they don’t last long, just two or three days. Then the temps break and the snow drifts linger, but birds come out and life goes on.

But not with this storm. Temps have stayed below zero, sometimes climbing to a to a balmy 20 degrees for a few minutes at noon, but then falling hard and fast. It’s been this way as long as I can remember. Meaning I have lost my memory in the wind, and also a couple of gloves, both for the right hand. I don’t blame the new manure spreader. 

Just before dusk, I make the horses’ mush in the house, carrying hot water from the shower to the freezer top where I mix it with pellets and supplements. Then I suit up in layers until I look like an inflatable sasquatch. Using a small cart to steady the portions, I trek to the barn, where the mush freezes before the horses can get it all down. I feed too much hay and hope the storm will break. The time waiting for the storm to break is much harder than doing chores.

It’s crucial that the horses each get a few gallons of water per day, especially since they are conserving energy and not moving much. It was -17 degrees when I decided to top off the tanks. For me, it’s the emotional equivalent of kissing everyone good night. But I can’t get the hose to attach. I know I drained it fully last time, and the spigot is working, but my heavy duty hose is on strike. A pipe would bend easier. I could drag the snake into the house and cajole it with stories of sunny California, or just fill some buckets and start schlepping.

It’s almost dark and few trips will do it, even after bumping the bucket on a post, so the bucket could spit water down my pant leg and into my boot. Well, you can’t live with goats and not have a sense of humor, I tell myself, sloshing back for more water.

But the top of the list of things I can’t control this week is manure. Good horsepeople take pride in clean pens. Manure means bacteria, parasites, flies, and disease. But it is also a visible reflection of what life means. My farm is humble, my barns more like sheds, but my pens are immaculate. Even if all the flies died at the first frost. It’s a matter of love and honor. 

Except in January. That’s why the sporty new spreader waits. Fresh wet manure drops onto frozen ground and freezes as fast as the mush does. I could get out with a pickax and be a man about it. But the next day I’d have to do it again. I choose brains over brawn, and call me a girl, but it can’t stay this cold forever. So, each day I chip out whatever turd-balls I can with the heel of my boot and fork them into a pile. The rest of the muck isn’t going anywhere. I pick my battles.

I’m not telling you this to complain and the last thing I want is your sympathy. Women like me pioneered this world. We missed being in the photo because we were busy doing chores, on our knees tending the Earth, or working for those deserving of our mercy and care.

Make no mistake. I am living the dream and up to the task, confident and capable. Made strong by honest work, smart enough to be efficient, and grateful enough to feel compassion for others. Like most women, I’ve done heavy work all my life and at 70, what we may have lost in gait, we make up for in wisdom. After being told our whole lives we are too emotional and not tough enough, this counts as having the last laugh. It would be a mistake to underestimate us, even now. 

Then one day, I wake before dawn, disoriented until I realize the wind has paused and the temps have risen overnight. The sky turns pink and yellow as sun rises, as cool as a cup of coffee forgotten on the counter, with a scum of spoiled cream on top. The sun is not warm enough to even be called tepid, but there are my horses, standing in a line like sleepy soldiers, their flanks aimed to the south, waiting for warmth. They know it will come.

Sometimes in a storm we forget January is the month we begin the shift from dark to light. We persevere with calm certainty, having not only survived the storm. We have gained strength from the wind. Spring is knocking. Hook up the new manure spreader. We’ll get it all set straight again, this home we love.

…

[This week on The Gray Mare Podcast, I read a chapter about a blizzard. Listen to it here. It might cheer you up in a perverse, it-could-be-worse sort of way. It did for me.]

An audio version of this essay is available to those who subscribe on Substack.  

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