This is for real, not a metaphor for the shit storms we have witnessed recently in several quarters. Those emit a different kind of smell from this job that I had in 1973.  This post was inspired by someone asking what job I had that would surprise most people.

I had just finished a year’s internship that followed three years of graduate school culminating in a Ph.D.  I was beginning work in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and we rented half of a big farmhouse just south of the city on one of three farms owned by a Mennonite dairy farmer and his son.  Having had some good farm experiences earlier in my life on my grandparents’ farm, I knew how to drive tractors and had also gained experience driving buses and trucks in other jobs during graduate school.  On this farm there was a large feed lot that had to be emptied of manure on a regular basis and then spread to adjacent fields as fertilizer for various crops.  When the owner learned I loved these kinds of farm jobs he was quick to offer me a part-time job in exchange for part of the rent.

First the manure had to be loaded into a spreader wagon with an open top. A chain connected the wheels to move the manure from front to back where the spreaders were turned by a chain connected to the wheels.  This had the effect if breaking the manure into smaller pieces while also kicking it up and out the back of what I call the wagon spreader.  As long as the wind was coming from the direction that I was driving it was no problem but when I turned the opposite direction and was driving with the wind, it was like the following wind in a sailboat.  Some of the manure and the smell made its way toward me and the tractor.  The good part was when I had one of the tractors with an enclosed cab but I often got one that did not have a cab.  Therefore, big stink, shitty job.

There is a kind of therapy involved with spreading manure and getting paid for doing it.  It’s alone time in out in a field feeling like you’re contributing to helping plants grow.  The hum of the tractor engine, the emptying of the manure spreader, a sense of accomplishment.  Some people apparently have a similar experience in mowing grass and I had that feeling doing other field work on the farms such as mowing or tilling the ground.  Years later we had our own “farm” where I mowed several acres regularly on a ZTR (zero turning radius) mower with a 50” deck. The only manure there was from donkeys and chickens but that’s another story for another time. I also had a diesel tractor and a bush hog for mowing adjacent fields. You can take the boy from the farm but you will never take the farm out of the boy.