Stable Cleanup
From Friscogirl
Kind of a bizarre question. The boys are always mucking out stables. What did one DO with the (ahem) muck afterwards? Must have been kinda smelly!!!! I know farmers use the stuff to fertilize, but....idle thought this morning.
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From Remuda
Interesting question, generally, but when did the boys clean stables in the series? They paid the livery to take care of that when in town, and when out on the trail, the horses knew what to do!
Anyway, if they did, it would not have been their place, so presume they'd have put it wherever the owner / employer wanted. If it was a farm, it likely would have gone to fertilizer, but otherwise . . . who knows . . .
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From GiddyUp
When I worked in a stable once the "muck" was just put on a big pile. I think it was going to be fetilzier but I'm not sure. Should have asked it when I had the chance.
Btw I'm with Remuda, when 'd the boys clean out stables? Must have missed that episode... I know Kid have been working in a stable in a story somewhere. But that was fan fiction. Just a parathese.
Anybody who got or had horses that knows the answear to this?
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From Frisgogirl
sorry for any confusion. I think they mucked a stable in fan fiction
it came to mind when I was writing the October challenge and the boys went into the barn to take care of their horses. I wondered what they did with the .....stuff.
I know, I know. very bizarre thinking!!!
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From Fortitudine
My grandfather kept a manure pile (fairly large at one point) in an area on the far side of the barn from the house, the house itself being a fair ways from the barn for obvious reasons. At regular intervals it was trucked off, presumably to neighbors with gardens. In the days before chemical fertilizer, manure would have been a valuable commodity.
I seem to remember reading, years and years ago, of farmers who dumped it in local rivers. This would have been prior to the existence of the EPA, however.
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From Countryrosie
Frisgogirl when I was younger and lived on the farm with my parents and grandparents my dad and grandpa would go down to the barn where the cows where every so often with a tractor and scoop the muck as you call it out and put it in a wagon that had spiked cyclinders at the back and they would load the manuer wagon as it was called and then run it out to the fields and spread it over them as ferterlizer. That was another use for the muck
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From Frankie ASJ
I have memories of a smouldering manure heap. When it had dried out some it was lit and slowly burned away for days on end. There's only so much horse poo roses need so, I guess, what wasn't wanted for gardens was burnt.
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From Kwiltn
My Maw-Maw used to tell me of the days when as a girl she (and her 8 siblings) were sent out into the street to scoop up the valuable poo left by horses or ox-carts for their garden.
And I spent more than one field exercise in Bavaria where the farmer sprayed liquified sh#* from their fertilizer tanks over their fields next to our bivouac sites....we highly suspected they weren't thrilled with the thought of nuclear missiles parked in their neighborhood.....not that I blame them, but try living downwind of THAT for a week at a time! PHEEEEEEWWWWWW!
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h
"Do you ever get the feeling that nothing right is ever going to happen to us again?" - Kid Curry
Tue May 01, 2012 8:37 am
