Green Circles

Greenwood Family picture on our front lawn (cerca Fall 1978). The “green circles” were in the field immediately behind us.

Green Circles (6 September 2019)

Today’s story about green circles should be understood even by those who are color blind (let me know if that’s not the case Caleb) and is appropriate for retelling in most settings, except maybe the dinner table and sacrament meeting... Oh, and I couldn’t find a good song to fit the theme, I guess there aren’t a lot of songs about manure...

Upon our return from the North Gem High School choir trip to Washington DC in 1991 I came upon an unexpected discovery… farms smell different than cities! Now, don’t get me wrong, I knew from early on that manure had a stinky reputation, and I definitely didn’t go around sniffing it, but this may have been the first time that I realized the cow manure smell extended beyond the limits of the dairy. As we pulled within a mile or two of the Weaver and Greenwood dairy farms I started to notice a distinct dairy smell. I had traveled this road many times in my life, yet I had never noticed the smell until returning after this week-long absence.

Taking care of manure on a dairy farm can be a full-time job. Unlike kids, cows don’t wear diapers and never get potty trained, so they spread their lovely donations wherever they walk. Our barn had a large grate upon which the cows’ back feet would rest during the milking process. This grate led to a big drain so we squeegee any patty donations into the drain and rinse them down. We would also clean the barn quite thoroughly every morning and evening after milking the cows. We would take the long hose and spray the splattered manure off all the interior walls and then wash the manure from the floors and down the drain using the hose and a large squeegee on a broomstick. We were very meticulous about this because any missed manure splatters would solidify onto the walls between milkings, making cleanup much more difficult. When I first started milking, I remember being in a hurry and thinking it was no big deal to leave a few flecks of manure on the wall. When this happened, I heard about it from the next person that milked because it made their cleanup job much more difficult. Instead of being able to spray most of the manure off the wall they were required to spend time scraping flakes off the wall. It was a good lesson that waiting until later often makes the job more difficult.

We also scraped the corrals on a consistent basis, typically every two or three days. With a scraper attached to the back of the tractor and the bucket on the front we would push and pull the manure to deposit it into the manure pit. Because cows don’t follow directions like “Get out of the way of the tractor!” very well, this chore was typically done when the cows were locked in the barn entrance area waiting to be milked.

Picture of a cow in the barn. Notice the grate the cow is standing on through which we washed the manure. Notice also the manure caked on the cow- this cow is actually not too bad, we would see much worse, but she probably spent some time soaking in the manure on the corral floors...

The corrals had individual stalls with straw spread on the ground in which they could enter to lay down. These stalls had to be cleaned out occasionally, usually using a pitchfork to throw the manure-laden straw out and lay down a clean layer. But despite all the work we did to help the cows stay clean and comfortable, it always astounded me how many of them refused to lay in the stalls, choosing instead a spot in the corrals with a good, thick layer of warm and stinky manure.

Removing manure from the manure pit was a less frequent, but much bigger project. We had a manure spreader that we would hook behind the tractor, fill with manure, and pull out to the field. Once in the field we would engage the spinners at the back of the manure spreader and drive up and down the field with manure being flung out behind us onto the ground to fertilize the crops. But it took a lot of trips with our small manure spreader so my dad was constantly looking for better solutions to the manure problem. One solution was to hire people with bigger manure spreaders to help empty out the pit. I remember him doing that only once, so it must not have been a perfect solution.

I was probably in middle school when my dad came up with the green circle solution. We had a really big sprinkler called the “Big Gun” that would connect directly to our 4-inch hand-line sprinkler pipes and spray a huge stream of water out about 70-80 feet. The green circle solution was to let some of the creek water into the manure pit to make it nice and runny, insert a huge pump into the manure pit, and pump the manure/water mixture out to the field in front of our house.

This kind of worked, but it was difficult to get the manure and water mixed up well enough to not get a lot of chunks. These chunks of manure would clog the pump, requiring someone to clean it out which was NOT a desirable job! Since school was in session at the time, that job fell mostly to my dad and another man he hired on the farm. They tried working out the kinks on this process for quite a while, but eventually got manure-soaked enough times to give up on the effort.

Despite the short duration of the green circle solution, I will always remember the spray of green emanating from the “Big Gun”. Have you ever been near enough to a sprinkler that you can feel the mist carried by the wind, even though the main stream is not touching you? I remember that mist, and in this case it was green, and I could definitely smell it.

I also remember being embarrassed as the school bus drove up to our house and Brenda Chirrett, our neighbor across the street, looked at the field in front of our house and asked me with a puzzled face what the green circles were. I was not exactly truthful as I muttered an “I don’t know” and hurried to get off the bus. I knew, but I was embarrassed.

So remember kids,
 - Don’t lay in the manure…
 - Manure stinks, but it’s great for growing wheat…
- When a green mist comes your way, don’t breathe too deeply...
- And most importantly, we parents are made to put you in embarrassing situations (cool parents!!!)...

Love you all!
Dad

PS. I’m still thinking about how to write a blog entitled “Too Many Bozos”. When/if I do, it will probably have guns in it, that’s why I included the picture below:).

April, Sydney, Kelsey, Caleb, Megan, and Marci at the Mormon Battalion Historic Site in San Diego. I would like to point out that although the man in the picture looks almost as strong as me, that is not me...