Ingunn’s farm here has a special place in the big barn called the manure cellar. This cellar is directly below the milking stable. Cow crap is shuffled and squeegied through small openings in the stable floor and collects into massive piles in the cellar below. This cellar is also a place where rainwater collects, as the cellar floor is below the outside ground level. Cow manure is a valuable substance on a farm, but as anyone can imagine, the collecting and managing of this stuff is not the prettiest or best job in the world.
I approached this task with aplomb, knowing it can’t be that bad. This is even though Ingunn’s son Arvin said “it is the worst job in the world.” Arvin is only 20, and I’m not sure he’s done the job recently, or with Andrea, the man I’d be working with. Chestin, a woman (and her two daughters Marie and Nora) visiting on the farm, said that her first day working here 25 years ago, cleaning out the manure cellar was her first job on the very first day she was here. Apparently she made it through, so I thought I’d do ok. That, and Andrea had some good ideas on how to take care of the situation.
I’m just not used to moving suction pipes around while standing shin-deep in shitty water with my feet stuck firmly in a mixture of mud and dookie.
The fun thing about today is that I got to drive some tractors!!! I don’t know what it is about tractors, but I just love them. It is so cool to drive a tractor, and this is the first time I’ve really done actual farm work on one. There was another time in Michigan when I was visiting my Mom and Gary when I got to do some front-loader work spreading a pile of sand on the trails around their property. That was good work and good experience, but I was driving around in their back yard, along grass trails, not around a farm hauling implements and wagons and stuff.
So anyway. Andrea went to a neighbor and borrowed their mega-tractor and huge tanker for hauling and spraying the liquidy manure. I got to drive the little Fiat tractor and position the pump. (Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of this operation in place!). So, there’s the tanker, the hose, the pump driven by the Fiat tractor, another hose, and then a long sucker tube. First we had to position everything, connect up the hoses, then get on to it.
It was when we were positioning things that my feet got stuck while holding the hose that connected to the pump on my left and to the sucker tube on my right. In the picture below, on the right side, just outside of the cellar is where I was standing. There was a foot of water there and inside the cellar. Knowing I had to get dirty sometime, I picked the tube up out of the nasty water and tried to take a step back, so the hose and tube could get into better alignment in the cellar. My feet stuck, the weight of the hose threw me off balance, and into the water I went, butt first. Splash! My legs were soaked, my arms soaked up to the elbows and my wellingtons (boots) full of water. Murky, brown, stinking shitty water.
Oh well. It didn’t really phase me much. I stood up and went on about the business. After a little bit, though, Andrea suggested I get cleaned up and put on clean clothes as the nastiest business (setting everything up) was over and hopefully I’d be able to stay dry for the rest of the day.
And, I did.
Later on I got to drive the eldest tractor, a really old Massey-Ferguson, to connect up to the manure-spreading wagon. Andrea showed me the controls and gave me instructions about where and how to get the wagon connected. Weee! It was fun. Later on I’ll get to drive the bigger Fiat 4-wheel drive tractor while hauling the wagon full of cowshit.
I will definitely have a tractor on my farm. Not so sure about the cows. Their manure is good for the soil, though, and I do like cream in my coffee and cheese on the table. And butter, and yogurt … so a cow may be a good thing to have around. Just not six of them. Definitely a tractor. Hopefully an older used one that is really reliable and simple. (Like the little Fiat!)
I’ve also done a good bit of other things around the farm. I put up a fence around a new grass field for the cows. I used a tool I’d never used before to make the holes for the posts. I think Ingunn called it a spect? Dunno. It’s a sorta heavy, spear-shaped iron/steel thing. It is definitely not a shovel and there was no digging involved. Essentially, I got to where I wanted to place a post, hoisted this thing a foot or so off the ground, with it’s sharp end down, and dropped it straight down. It made a small hole. Hoist it again, and try to drop it into the first small hole. Lift, drop, lift, drop and after about 10-12 lift and drops, a 1 1/2 foot deep hole is made. It is far, far easier than digging a hole with either a shovel or a post-hole digger. I placed eight fence posts this way. Actually, I placed eight of them, five of them in a crooked line which I had to fix later. In the end, I placed 13 posts and with that tool I could have kept on placing and placing all day. It’s a lost tool, replaced by technology that some must think does the job better. I fenced in one side of a field that is about 200 meters long by about 50 meters wide. It’s the field in the background of this picture - there’s a fence along the left side and part of the top.
I’ve also done a lot of weeding. Kohl rabi and leeks and onions. It’s nothing like the weeding I did at La Chalaguere, as we’re almost done weeding the whole garden and that will be it for the weeding for me. However … I did weed two out of six rows of carrots. Weeded and thinned them, even. This took forever! And I’m still nowhere near done.
Other than that, life is good here. I have an entire house to myself for the moment. There’s four bedrooms, each with bunk-beds, a kitchen a living room, a shower room and a toilet room. The entire downstairs of the building is where a lot of production equipment and veggie washing, herb drying and cold storage is located. Years ago, this farm produced a lot more stuff, more veggies, and more products for a Norwegian company called Helios. And, there were lots more people working here. Ingunn and her father, Einer, ran a “practicant” or apprenticeship program where people applied for a position on the farm and then worked here for a year, learning organic agriculture. They don’t do much of it any more. Einer is 92 and Ingunn just doesn’t want to manage it any more. So, there’s no one to fill up the house I’m in. I have meals with the family most of the time. Sometimes I serve myself.
I think that’s it for now. I can mention the big tractors that came in to bale the hay. It was quite a fascinating scene and I took a bunch of photos. Ah, yes, also … I signed up on Facebook, for whatever it’s worth. Take a look if you dare. I’ll post again when I have more to report!
