It's manure spreading time at our farm--time to recycle six months of
accumulated horse poop (plus shavings) back to the fields from where
it originated. The fields soon will be too wet and mushy to run the
manure spreader over without cutting deep ruts, so now is our window
of opportunity to reduce the mountains of manure that have accumulated
over the spring and summer so we can start "fresh" for the fall and
winter. There is nothing quite so satisfying as making good use of what
appears to the average citizen to be noxious organic material. Ah,
to the contrary! This poop is the best fertilizer in the world, because it is
produced, with great enthusiasm and not much effort, by our horses.

Scooping poop out of stalls is a therapeutic exercise in more ways than
one and usually far more satisfying than pitching the figurative stuff
all day in other settings. There are a few horses that are
'pilers'---beautifully barn trained creatures that they are, leaving
nice neat little collections tidily in one corner of the stall, one
deposit on top of the other, so that when you are cleaning, you have
only to remove 20 lbs. of manure in one forkful without having to do a
thing to the rest of the stall except fluff the shavings. Then some
are of the 'the more the merrier' variety--leaving many small
piles around the stall like so many Easter eggs to be found. It is more
time consuming to clean, but satisfying as the stall looks so much
better when you leave it than when you walked in. Lastly are the
'blenders' whose stalls remind me somewhat of my children's
bedrooms on a very bad day. If you dare to open the door, you'll find a
whirlwind of everything mixed together, impossible to sort clean stuff
from dirty stuff and the temptation is to just walk back out and close
the door without even trying.

We pile our manure loads onto cement slab, and as the months go by there
is greater challenge to accomplish the dumping of the load as the
wheelbarrow must be pushed or pulled up the pile. Eventually one feels
like Sisyphus attempting to roll the rock uphill only to have it roll
back down again and have to start again. Manure piles do settle though,
and shrink with the decomposition taking place, so it is possible to
keep loading on top and not see a whole lot of change in the height of
the hill over time. When the time comes for spreading, we start digging
into the pile, revealing layers as if on an archaeological dig. The
steam rises from the opened pile, and sometimes the heat is so great
that I barely touch it comfortably with my bare hand. It steams in the
manure spreader and as it flies out the back of the spreader onto the
fields, it appears to be some great gaseous chemical concoction that we
are throwing back to the grass (which of course it is!)

We are rewarded with the growing grass in the spring--indeed there is a
'pony' in this pile of poop--in fact many ponies! Brown smelly
organic material returned back to the land to provide sweet green
organic material for the next winter. It is a remarkably simple
formula. We purchase no additional fertilizers, we buy no outside hay.
The horses provide for the fields, the fields provide for the
horses, then the horses provide for the fields once again. Our
mission, when we choose to accept it, is to get it back out to the
fields, and when the grass is ready to harvest, bring it back in.
Transforming waste to nourishment all in one year's time. Amazing.

Can I say the same of the things I cast off as "worthless waste" in
my own life? The stinky, yucky, messy and ugly parts of me
that I wish I could throw away, flush and never see again? Is it
possible that even the worst shit can be gathered up in an attempt to
clean myself up, hauled off, piled away to decompose all by
itself, without much effort or worry whatsoever, and thereby I'm
transformed to something far more pleasant in the process?

Instead I tend to let the piles accumulate around me and tend not to want to let them go, even if it is awful to live with such a mess.

Perhaps I can find the "pony" in the pile if I try. He's in there
just waiting to be found, and ready to take me on the ride of my life.