Growing up on a little farm outside Leota, Minnesota, it was a Saturday morning ritual. Fire up the old 'A' John Deere, hook up the manure spreader and pull it under the back door of the hog house.

Now, I said "hog house," not "hog confinement system." This hog house was small, and held... oh... maybe 20 or so pigs and hogs. That was the kind of little farm I grew up on - 20 or so pigs, 7 or 8 cows (til the old barn burned down), some chickens back there wandering around the pen back by the chicken coop. There was, of course, a dog and an assortment of lambs, goats and a stray cat or two through the years.

But back to the hog house and that Saturday morning.

While there weren't many hogs, to me they were walking, snorting, poo producing machines. (Yes, I'll use 'poo'... back in the day it was something else, stronger like the smell!) .

Pull out the shovel, and hoist it, full of that treasure laying all over the hog house floor, out the back door into the manure spreader. Then again. And again. And again.

You get the idea. Pitching on a little league ball field on a Saturday was a bunch more fun than pitching poo from that hog house.

Then, fire up the 'A' again, out to the field, pull a few rusty levers on that manure spreader and.... have at it.

Now, fast forward about half-a-century and I've been a town kid (a bit old and wrinkled) for decades. But I do, in a sense, keep my hand (and nose) on the farm. You see, one of my favorite websites is the This is Farming site that South Dakota Corn has. It's a really cool way to get 'back to the farm' without having to put on those rubber boots and stepping back into that, ah...poo.

So, I'm perusing the site and see this article they had titled the power of pooWell, that brought me right back to those Saturday mornings on that little ramshackle farm. It turns out I wasn't just cleaning that hog house, I was providing a whole lot to the soil, the environment and more. Yep, that poo powered agriculture in a big way, and still does!

Maybe that's one of the reasons I like the website so much... it lets me jump into the farm time machine and go back to... yes, I'll say it... the good old days.

Oh, they have a ton of great articles, everything from harvesting to family farms and even some of the best recipes you'll ever see.

Oh and by the way, when I was thinking about those long ago Saturday mornings, even the smell was good all these years later. I remember by dear departed Pa said 'Mmmm.... that smells like money'.  I thought he was crazy.

Turns out he was right.

 

 

 

  

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