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130 · Why Cows Need Names 130 14 Tour the Manure it’s about twenty after seven, and the sun is busy burning the haze off of this morning. Marvin Weaver called me a couple weeks ago to talk about dairy manure, and that’s why i’m on my way to his farm today. Marvin has always been a true innovator in the community. Sometimes to the point where he’s raised a few eyebrows, but he always manages to stay just within the rules. His current area of interest for potential innovation is the dairy manure handling systems on amish farms in this settlement. He is, of course, right on target. When we talked, it only took a couple minutes for me to agree this was one of the more pressing problems on the farms. Back before the settlement allowed milking machines and bulk refrigeration tanks, the number of cows a farm could milk was controlled by the number of people who could be around twice a day to do the hand milking. Most farms had 10 to 15 cows, and the manure really wasn’t much of a problem. Dad, or some of the older boys, took a few minutes with a pitchfork after milking and threw the manure into an old wooden manure spreader. it wasn’t all that pleasant, but it didn’t take long. The situation changed pretty radically after most of the church districts in the settlement started to allow milking machines. all of a sudden, the number of cows a farm could have was not limited by the number of teatpulling human hands available twice a day. Cow numbers went up dramatically over a period of one or two years. instead of 10 to 15 cows, farms were milking 20, or 25, or even 30, still a trivial number of cows by Yankee Tour the Manure · 131 standards, where hundreds or even thousands of cows may be on a single farm, but nonetheless a huge change for the settlement. One of the unintended consequences of more cows was more manure, accompanied by more sore muscles and bad backs. it turns out pitching the manure from 10 or 15 cows is no big deal. it’s not fun, but it’s soon over. On the other hand, pitching the manure from 30 cows is a completely different stinking kettle of fish. Manure handling went from being just another job on the farm to an arduous, unpleasant, giant chore. i’m really not surprised that Marvin chose to call me when he wanted to talk about manure. By training i’m an agronomist with a PhD in soil chemistry , and it is widely known that my PhD research and dissertation topic was horse manure management. Doing a dissertation on horse manure can lead to a great many jokes and some professional ribbing. But I always figured , heck, a lot of PhDs are horse manure—i just had enough honesty to put it on the cover. Besides, at the time, i couldn’t think of anything funnier. after talking about these manure concerns for a while, Marvin and i agreed that it might be a good idea to set up a little fact-finding tour down to the Holmes County amish settlement. The Holmes County, Ohio, settlement —which actually encompasses parts of two or three counties—is about an hour and a half southwest of here, and it’s the largest amish settlement in the world. Milking machines have been common in that settlement for many years, and in general most of the church districts seem to be a little less strict when it comes to what farm machinery is allowed. That’s not universally true. Some of the church districts are extremely conservative, but we reasoned we might pick up some ideas by visiting some of the more lenient ones. We contacted Bill, one of the county agents who works closely with amish dairy farmers in the Holmes County settlement, and he readily agreed to set up a tour for us. We decided to keep it small, just myself and three other people who could fit in my little car. We agreed on a date and decided to ask eli Gingerich if he’d like to ride along. Marvin also wanted to see if his son Owen might be willing to go, which was fine with me, but Marvin didn’t know for sure—his son’s a little shy—so we kept a seat...

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