The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

A load of horse manure

medium sized pile of horse manure


This picture shows a medium size pile of horse manure in front of the large mass of wood chips near our parking area.

That load of horse dung represents years of back and forth with the guy who scoops it out of the neighbors barn. My timing was just right last week on New Years Eve when I was driving home from the store with some beer and happened to notice the guy pull in to the driveway of the barn full of organic gold as Anna sometimes calls it.

I stopped....shared a couple beers....casually mentioned how easy it might be for him to dump the latest horse manure next to our wood chips instead of the previous place. Talked about chicken waterers and sweet potatos and headed on home.

In my opinion the moral of this story is to never under estimate the motivation that a cold beer can inspire.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Oh goodness... some people may not know how to value the treasure that is a dump truck putting a pile of manure/compost/leaves precisely where you want it. Having hauled many a bed of "stuff" that I shoveled in and out, I do. Good for you!
Comment by Eliza @ Appalachian Feet Thu Jan 6 18:09:34 2011
We'll still have to shovel that into buckets and haul it the half mile to our garden, but that's a lot better than hauling it a couple of miles down the road! It's also good to be able to see how much is there --- I tend to use up every bit of manure that's in my grasp, and then am sad that I don't have it for the crops that need it most. Maybe this way I can plan my manure usage better.
Comment by anna Thu Jan 6 19:17:46 2011





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