Operation Poo

Today, we made our much-anticipated trip to the North Liberty, Ind. horse farm for a load of the fresh stuff. My nine-year old son, Isaac manned the camera and did a bang-up job capturing the tapestry of oderiferous action.




Without further ado, there it is - horse shit. Dropped last year from the hindquarters of a somewhat chubby quarter horse named Cinnabar, collected by caring owners Cindy and Darren and piled up to compost into nature's finest fertilizer. And, as they both expressed to us, it did indeed smell good.


Real-life man of the land Darren, right, patiently explains the proper way to shovel crap to moron, wanna-be Front Yard Farmer, Yours Truly, left.



A frisky "paint" named Maria gets all up in Isaac's stuff. Michele encourages Maria. "Bite him! Bite him!"

These are fish - crappie and bluegill near as could be guessed - tacked to the wall of an outbuilding dating back to the 1890s. Darren estimated that the fish had to be at least 50 years old and were inexplicably nailed to the wall of the building by the prior owner of the homestead, who also happened to leave strategic caches of vintage porn magazines in the farm's other buildings, including an old outhouse. Then Darren asked if we wanted an old outhouse. We politely declined.

And finally, the poo makes it home and is spread onto the ground. In all, the loading, unloading and spreading/mixing into the soil couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes. The other 2 hours at the farm were spent shooting the you-know-what, drinking Darren's beer, jumping on a trampoline with Alex and Isaac, and petting horses, dogs, barn cats and the discovery of a dried out crawfish that had made its way from a pond across the street. In other words, about as fun a day as one could possibly expect to have shoveling shit, thanks to our awesome hosts, Cindy and Darren.

Point of Order Haiku

Is it a Front Yard

or is it not a Front Yard,

Here, you make the Call:

Clarification

I (Michele) would like to clarify that the future garden is not in the front yard. We are on the corner of a cul-de-sac. We have a front, side and back yard. The garden is on the side yard. While I am not disputing the "hillbilly" reference, I am in disagreement with my hubby of the locale.

Obamas Following Our Lead

President and Mrs. Obama totally stole this idea from us, those copycats. Good to see this fledgling little journal is already making the rounds. Kudos to Jason Kelly for the NYT link.


A tip of the cap to entertainment columnist Jackie Harvey for the unique style of the rest of this post.


ITEM! Tomorrow, we'll be making a trip to a horse farm for a free load 'o the stinky stuff to turn into the dirt. Coming soon, pictures of poop!


... I should probably learn what growing zone we're in. Michele and the boys couldn't hold their

water about a month ago and not only bought some seed packages, they planted them as well.


So far, we have sprouting beans, lettuce, cucumber, I think carrot and, in the white planter, that there is corn. No, we don't expect them to survive the transfer into the ground, but at least we know the seeds work. We got them at Wal-Mart so ya never know.

Next we'll be heading to Rural King for stuff, which may be a dangerous thing. They're selling baby chicks for $1.50. The advertisement says they'll grow into fleshy, meaty monsters. Mmmmm... chicken.

A Rock and a Hard Place

WARNING: moderate leap of logic forthcoming: This post has something to with gardening, but indulge me a little.

Before we began turning our yard over, I told to a coworker at the Tribune what we were planning to do and she offered to let me borrow her motorized tiller. I was tempted - who wouldn't want free use of a big, bad, earth churning machine to do in a few minutes what it would take us several hours to do with a shovel? But then I thought about our yard, or specifically, the scores and scores of large rocks that exist just under the sod. Using a post hole digger in my yard is one of the most depressing and frustrating jobs I have ever undertaken.

I turned down the offer of the tiller because I was afraid of what lurked beneath. I knew I would hit something and then have to replace blades, or perhaps even worse. As you can see, I made a wise decision. These are the two biggest examples of what lurks within our soil, but there were and still are handfuls of fist- and egg-size rocks just waiting for a blade to strike against them and topple us over (that happened to both Michele and I - right on our asses). Instead of risking damage to someone else's property, we chose the more difficult route - the shovel.

And that brings me to... AIG. Or, more specifically, the fervor and furor over the $160 million-ish in bonuses paid out to AIG execs out of the $170 billion in federal bailout money they've received. There has been great outrage over these bonuses, which apparently weren't unknown or unexpected before this week. The government has known, or should have known, that these payments were coming, since, ya know, they agreed to allow them already. Here is the most salient passage from the linked story:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.

And more from a Fox News story:

This would seem to exempt the AIG bonuses that lawmakers and President Obama are looking to recover. Incidentally, Dodd is the largest single recipient of 2008 campaign donations from AIG, with $103,100, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

So, what's my point? It's like the rocks under the surface: If you know they are there, why raise a fuss about them after they're exposed and cause damage to other peoples' property? You take of the problem and move on. If you claim you didn't know about them, then you're either unprepared for the job at hand or you are being willfully ignorant of the situation.

Front Yard Farming

The information to the right generalizes what we're doing, but I thought I'd go into it a little more in depth.

I recently wrote a short story in which the protagonist, a loud, slovenly, bombastic sort who is a bit of an homage to Ignatius J. Reilly from 'Confederacy of Dunces', tires of the constant bad news he hears every day from the television media. He complains of fear mongering and a consumer-driven agenda. He finally decides to do something about it by storming the TV studio and sending out his own message to the masses. However, the stream of recent bad news turns out to be coverage of a large-scale zombie outbreak into which he has just stumbled, but his paranoia is so focused that he only hears and sees what he wants to - only what conforms to his narrow point of view - until it's too late.

Part of his message is for the populace to eschew consumerism and "turn up your soil to begin planting for tomorrow!" Despite the comedic, over-the-top nature of the plot (at least I found it funny), I felt the basic idea is still relevant. We are a nation of consumers and I'm tired of going to the grocery store and pissing and moaning about the high cost of, well, everything.

Every so often, when my boys have asked me for the 10th time to do something that I know they can do on their own, I quote Ben Franklin: 'God helps those who help themselves.' And that's what this is about - doing something that, in the not-too-distant past, was extremely common. Plant a garden. Grow your own food. It's what the country was founded on, right? Do for yourself, because you damn well can't expect someone to do it for you. That's what I believe. I fear that there are too many out there who do not.

So a garden, a 12-foot by 12-foot patch in the front yard because we basically have no backyard. Yes, I know planting garden is nothing unique, nor the idea behind it. I'm not claiming some some moral high ground by doing this and I'm not suggesting that I've hit upon some grand, original idea. If anything, I've seen the light. Why depend on others for that which you can do for yourself? Time to practice a little more of what I preach.

We're going to try an assortment of vegetation: tomatoes, peppers, beans, lettuce, cucumbers, even corn. In the coming months, we'll share pictures and stories of what we tried, of what worked, of who helped us, but mostly of what we goofed up and learned from. I promise you, I'm all thumbs, none of which are green. Hopefully it won't begin resemble something out of Motel Hell. There will probably be lots of other crap posts slipped in here or there. It may have something to do with gardening, it may not. I'll apologize ahead of time for any of that.

Thanks for reading,
Steve, Michele, Alex, Isaac and assorted pets