Over the holidays I’ve had the occasion to be the deliverer of stall leavings or horse “crumpets” to our manure pile herein known as Mt. Crumpet.
Over the 11 years that we’ve been operating our horse riding business, the daily chore of cleaning stalls and depositing what was gathered meant a trundle to the site created for such leavings that has slowly grown to quite the size – Mt. Crumpet.
We selected a site well away from the barn and house and from any source of water.
Our neighbour, Rick, also of the excellent tractor repair reputation, bulldozed a clearing in the bush and so it began.
Daily deliveries, 365 days of the year, as the stalls were cleaned after equines had resided in them for the night.
At first, we only had a riding lawn tractor with a small garden trailer being towed behind to make numerous trips.
Eventually we bought a used quad and a larger trailer that allowed for larger loads and, hence, fewer trips.
Periodically we’ve had to hire Rick and his dozer to pile the stuff so as to make more room for the delivery folk.
And occasionally I’ve attempted to even things out with Big Red, my diesel tractor, only to get royally stuck and having to cry for help from Donny, another kind neighbour down the road who owns a skidder.
I’ve regaled loyal readers over the years with tales of such Fred folly. Red is more than 30 years of age and not equipped with four-wheel drive, alas.
And after all of my mishaps with Big Red, including a visit from Donny’s friends who just happened to be visiting his garage and who thought it would be fun to come and see for themselves how Farmer Fred immersed Big Red in manure (good for a laugh or two...), my wife Laura banned Red from Mt. Crumpet.
I go not alone to Mt. Crumpet. My two pooches, Cedric and Todd, always accompany me.
They love coming with me since there is always some new adventure. They adventure, I watch. We have formed the Fellowship of the Crumpeteers.
After emptying the trailer, I seek them out to discover what they are doing.
Inevitably they are sniffing in the snow, snouts buried, perhaps in the hopes of locating mice.
The other day I completed the emptying task to look up and see Cedric madly digging into the side of an older hill, stop, sniff and dig some more, dirt flying everywhere.
Meanwhile, Todd was patiently standing by his side watching. When Cedric moved to the side to start a fresh dig, Todd would insert his nose in the first spot and commence to dig it deeper.
And so it goes: Cedric does the exploratory dig, the hard part; Todd’s work is then made easy. Not stupid, our Todd.
I encourage them with some stirring speech: “My fellow Crumpteteers, long have we laboured blah,blah,blah...” while, with tails wagging, they continue their explorations.
But I lose them when some chittering erupts from a nearby tree at which point both heads come sharply up. You can just hear them mentally shout “Squirrel!”
Then the mining operation is abandoned as off they dash to surround some tree and bark themselves silly while the aforementioned rodent continues to hurl insults in their general direction.
Too bad. I thought it was actually a good speech.
You can reach Rural Roots by e-mail: fbljones@hotmail.com or by dropping a note to Rural Roots, P. O. Box 402, South Gillies, Ont. P0T 2V0