It’s an inevitable part of life on the farm. If you have farm animals, you’re going to have poop. There are many names for it, but no matter whether you call it excrement, dung, doo-doo, feces, or, and I had never heard this one before, slops, it is a certainty when you have livestock.We had lived here at the farm for a couple of years when my wife informed me I could not continue to use the word “farm” in my conversations and writing unless we actually added some farm critters.I was up for the challenge, and we quickly set operation “make the farm legit” into motion. After the fence was up, we trekked down to Bay Minette, Alabama, to procure a trio of Nigerian dwarf goats. Said trio wasted no time on the trip home turning the back of G’s Expedition into a mobile goat barn, and no barn is complete without, you guessed it, poop. Fortunately, I had the foresight to put a large tarp underneath the dog kennels we were using to bring the three amigos back home to Brooksville Road.Goats were a new experience for me. We had horses, chickens, dogs, cats and the occasional pig on our farm when I was a boy but never goats. Thus, I had no experience with goat droppings. As it turns out, they are fairly easy to clean up. Picture a spilled box of Cocoa Puffs cereal. Actually, make that several boxes, but you get my point.Cleaning out the goat shed for the very first time, I was taken back to the days of mucking out the horse stalls in our barn as a boy. It was a somewhat romantic memory in an “All Creatures Great and Small” kind of way.
Our recent addition of ducks and geese has taken the farmyard dung to a new level; it’s a veritable “pooapalooza.” While Dan and I worked building the “Quack Shack” and runs for our new fowl over the past several weekends, I entertained visions of grandeur. Our feathered friends, which we had raised from the duckling and gosling stages, would sleep soundly in their coops at night and free range about the farm during the day.It was a beautiful picture in my mind, something like an episode of P. Allen Smith’s “Garden Home.” I would fling open the coop doors each morning and watch as our majestic ducks and geese made their way bugging around the yard.However, as is often the case in life, the reality turned out a bit differently than the dream. Suddenly, Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm, which I had envisioned, became more of a waste wonderland. The yard is now a maze of manure, and I have the soiled muck boots to prove it.The solution is that we need a good rain; however, ever the optimist, I began to look at the redeeming qualities of the situation at hand, or in this case, at foot. For the farmer and gardener, guano is gold. The bulk of the aforementioned mucked-out manure from my childhood went straight into the garden where it was tilled into the soil as fertilizer. The rich soil of that garden always produced a bounty of vegetables for our family.It hit me recently that my backyard tomatoes look better than ever this year thanks to a healthy dose of “Wholly Cow” brand composted manure purchased in sacks from the local garden center. In fact, my Creole and Cherokee Purple tomatoes look as if they could take the blue ribbon at the county fair.
While I’m not planning on trying to take “Ducky Doo” or “Goat Guano” nationwide with the co-op and garden center industry, it does make sense to start composting some of our own fertilizer rather than buying it.
Dan and I have repurposed the wire bin that once housed the river rocks in our landscaping beds and turned it into a compost bin. Between the ducks, geese, and goats, we should be looking at a treasure trove of rich composted fertilizer when we add in our grass clippings, veggie scraps, coffee grounds, and eggshells.
After a little research, I found that of the three options, goat droppings come in first place, but don’t tell the ducks and geese. Compared to chicken, duck, goose and even cow manure, the content of nitrogen is much higher in goat poo, meaning it does a much better job of supplying nutrients to plants and improving soil structure.
As the old saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Now, I guess it’s time to break out the rake, shovel and pitchfork and start making “chicken soup out of chicken….” Well, you get the point.
Until next time, here’s to always making the most out of the crappy situations that may come our way, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.