Embrace the chicken-shit (Cumberland saga)

Blain looked over at Sally as he was refilling the wheelbarrow with chicken-shit from the trailer and asked “You said using this stuff for fertilizer would increase yields “a lot”. How much is “a lot”?

Sally licked his lips, indicating that he was about to go into a long dissertation.

“Well, that depends…” he started off.

“That ain’t just chicken-shit you are shoveling. Its got bedding in it” Sally said, peering more closely at the grayish-brown mass Blain was forking out of the back of the trailer. “In this case I would guess they used shredded corn stalk.”

“Any way, I asked our County Extension agent, ol’ Doc Kimball that very same question about 30 years ago. He hemmed and hawed and pulled out a tape measure and tapped on his calculator and he figured that on average I might get ten more bushels of shelled corn for every yard*. And after measuring my trailer, he figured it held about three yards...so say 30 more bushels per trailer load.” Sally said.

“How much we gonna put on?” Blain asked. He was working up a sweat and didn’t have a good place to put his jacket...now sprinkled with chicken-shit and bedding.

“Ol’ Doc Kimball said I could put three trailer loads on an acre without a problem” Sally said.

Blain worked the numbers in his head. “So you get 30 bushels to the acre without any fertilizer and you add three trailer loads of this…” Blain said, pointing his fork at the mound of chicken-shit in the trailer...”and you get 120 bushels...four times as much? That doesn’t seem possible.”

“Ain’t nothin’ quite that simple in farmin’” Sally agreed. “It might not rain much next year or we might get hail or a wind-storm. But in general, if you don’t put fertilizer on the field you won’t be takin’ much off of it in the fall. Plant roots ain’t nuclear reactors that can transmorgify elements.”

Then, as an after-thought, Sally said “And we gotta add lime or the roots won’t be able to use the nutrients”

Blain frowned. He had a hard time visualizing adding limes to the field. Maybe the juice? He said as much.

That got a chuckle out of Sally. He was in a great mood. He was getting a lot of work out of Blain and Blain was a pretty fair conversationalist to boot. Blain’s comments had gotten him thinking that he might end up with some long-term house-guests as well.

“No. Ground limeSTONE” Sally said.

“How much of that do you need and where are you going to get it?” Blain asked.

Blain’s imagination caught fire with the idea of fertilizing the fields of Copperhead Cove. Sure, it was work but it would be less than breaking new land and he would be a hero.

“I can git that” Sally said. “There’s a lime-pit ‘bout thirty miles west of here. Lot cheaper than buying it at the lumber yard.”

“Ya know, the smart money is to throw the lime in with the chicken-shit and then fluff it all up with the skid-steer before loading it into the trailer” Sally said. “It will save having to spread it twice.”

While he was refilling the wheelbarrow, Blain reminded Sally “So, how much do we need?”

Sally took note of the word “we” and smiled inside. The kid was “in”.

“Depends on if you want the textbook answer or the Doc Kimball answer” Sally waffled.

“What does the ‘textbook’ say” Blain asked.

“Bout six tons to the acre” Sally said.

Blain put down the handles of the wheelbarrow. Sally had told him that the trailer held about 1500 pounds of chicken-shit. He couldn’t imagine spreading another 12000 pounds of ground rock by hand.

“What did Doc Kimball say?” Blain asked, hoping it wasn’t more.

“Doc Kimball said to use fifty pounds for every yard of chicken-shit” Sally said. “That would be three bags per trailer load.”

Blain picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and started to push it away from the trailer. “That’s a big difference” he said over his shoulder.

“The way Doc ‘splained it is that the textbook is trying to turn Tennessee clay into Iowa loam. It’s gotta a long way to go. Doc said his number was just trying to balance out with what the chicken-shit was adding. He figured the varieties of corn and beans and punkins we were growing were already adapted to our soils, we just had to be careful to not make them any worse.”

“Did it work?” Blain asked. He was going have to wash-up before he could eat supper. That was going to be a long, cold shower.

“Worked pretty damned good” Sally said, sounding a little bit surprised. “The chicken-shit even gives you a little bit of kick the next year...maybe half as much as the first year.”

“If it works so good, why doesn’t Sig use it?” Blain asked.

“Ain’t for me to get into another man’s head. I got plenty of demons in my own to keep me entertained” Sally said. “If you wanna know why he don’t use fertilizer, you are gonna have to ask him yourself.”

Then Sally said “If you are gonna have that discussion with him, I wanna make sure you got the numbers straight. How much bang-for-the-buck are you gonna tell him?”

Blain recited “Ten bushels of corn for every yard of chicken-shit and thirty-bushels for a load this size. And three loads per acre and three bags of limestone per trailer load.”

“That should be ten bushels of SHELLED corn. A bushel of shelled corn is a lot more than a bushel of corn still on the cob” Sally said.

Blain frowned in concentration. “So, how much IS a bushel of shelled corn? How long would it take to eat that much?”

Sally said, “Back when the mountain-men and fur traders were moving across the country, they figured a pound of parched corn would keep a man working for a day. Now they might be supplementing with game and fish and wild greens and stuff, but for rough figurin’ a bushel of corn will last a man about two months.

“So a fella would need six bushels to make it through a year?” Blain said.

Blain looked at the trailer with new respect. “Basically, the chicken-shit in this trailer load was enough to feed five people for a year!”


“Hold on to your horses there, sonny” Sally said. “That’s if everything else goes right. Farmers gotta saying, ‘Don’t count your chickens before the eggs hatch.’”

"So, how many people does Sig have up on Copperhead Cove?" Sally wanted to know.

"I don't know" Blain admitted. "I don't think I have seen them all and I wasn't keeping count."

"Guess" Sally suggested.

"Maybe 15 people" Blain said.

"I woulda guessed more" Sally commented. "That count kids?"

"No. I was just figurin' adults" Blain admitted.

"Ya gotta count the kids. A grown man can get by on pretty poor vittles but growin' kids and women need milk an eggs and vitamins and stuff like that" Sally advised him.

Blain searched his mind to try to get a handle on how many kids were in the Cove..."Maybe twice as many kids as grown-ups" Blain said after a minute.

Sally nodded his head. "That sounds about right.

Then Blain commented "Now that I think about it, seems like there are more women than men."

"I seen that too" Sally admitted.

"Sig has his back against the wall, doesn't he?" Blain said after thinking about it for a minute. "Goin' from about 45 mostly women-and-kids to 90 in less than a year."

"If I were you, I would soft-sell the idea of fertilizer" Sally advised. "Don't push. Just tell him what you learned. Folks don't like to get pushed and men like Sig REALLY don't like to be pushed."

"He is way smarter than you realize" is how Sally ended the conversation.

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