Amish Fertilizer, One Traditional Load at a Time

We made a trip to Holmes County recently, to see what the Amish people there were doing with the idle days of winter.  In typical fashion, even though the ground was frozen and spring planting was still a month away, we found that Amish people were out using the day to good purpose.  There are plenty of things that need attention on a farm, even in winter.  But this day, it seemed that most people were mucking out the stalls and loading up manure spreaders.  Almost everywhere we turned, we saw teams hitched to traditional red spreaders, rolling slowly over the fields, pitching manure left, right and aft, preparing the soil for spring planting, or fertilizing a field planted earlier with winter wheat. 

At this farm, the lad had used a gasoline-powered front loader to stack manure outside the barn.  It was a long and wide pile of aromatic fertilizer (easily eight feet high and thirty yards long), and all of it was destined for the fields across the way.  I got this picture as he brought his team back for another load, and I thought how remarkable it was that he’d do little else that day.  I also thought it remarkable that the horses would do little else that day.

Move a pile of manure as big as an eighteen wheeler?  If you drive a team of horses, there’s only one way to do that – one trip at a time, all day long.