Awwww, Shit

Yesterday morning, I woke up tired. Todd, Rachel, Nathan, and our neighbor Devin (flatmate of Jon and Sylvia) and I had spent the evening at a free concert. The sun woke me at 7:30, as it usually does on sunny days, and I thought, as I think every morning, "I don't want to go to that farm today."

Of course, pretty much every morning, I wake up and go to that farm, and so it was this morning, in part because it was beautiful and sunny, and in part because it was manure spreading day.

"I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it if I took today off," I said to Kirsten and Jonathan when I arrived at the farm.
"Right. I'm gonna go inside and do some odds and ends," said Kirsten. "Have fun!"

Jonathan and I took pitchforks and wheelbarrows to the ton and a half of manure that was slowly draining its liquid components onto the upper field. I'll spare you to gritty details, except to say that we spent the two and half hours of spreading work doing two things: 1) a discussion of anti-consumerism and sustainability and 2) shit puns:

"Shit happens."
"That buckwheat [the cover crop giving its life for the field] is in some deep shit now."
"It's a shit job, but somebody's gotta do it."
"Now we're gettin' shit done."
"Bullshit." [it was mostly from cows]
"That's a load of shit."
"It's like shitting a brick." [on extracting a half brick from the manure]
"You're shitting me."

Josh joined us part way through, and since it was sunny, and (as Jonathan put it) we were "working so old-fashioned," we took our shirts off and pitched the shit. Despite the smell, and because of the puns and the company, it was one of the more fun things I've done at the farm.


P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I came within a few inches of stabbing Josh in the chest with a fecal pitchfork. It didn't really fit in the rest of the post, but it happened, and I suspect that I will not hear the end of it, so I just want to own up to it now.