Pick-Your-Own

Or, "Hilma's in the sh*t again"?

The calcareous grassland we are working to recover and maintain is rich in biodiversity of low-nutrient species.
This environment is promoted by the removal of organic material in the form of grass, by grazing cattle. However, they then deposit concentrated nutrients back onto the grassland, which is not conducive to maintaining a low-nutrient soil. This unwanted fertiliser must be collected and removed from the site.
Read the detail in the Management Plan
Gardeners welcome to come and Pick-Your-Own

7th April, 2004

Today was a raking day, but I don't like raking.... so I got another job instead :-o
Part of the way along the top of compartment 4.

hilma collecting a cowpat displaying a cowpat before adding it to the sack adding cowpat to sack
What's the similarity between a blonde and a cow-pat?

A heap of cowpats Some of about 7 sacks-full that I collected today. (A foot for scale)
a cowpat in the exact shape and form of a trilobite fossil Trilobite!
Dragging the sacks

I happily fill the sacks, but others take them to the road for collection.

Bob, struggling to drag a full sack up the hill Richard, carrying a full sack

A truckful of shit - really

view of the back of the truck, filled with sacks of cowpoo another view into the truck, of sacks full of cowpoo a view of the manure heap, which is massive

Saturday afternoon

An aimless day.... so I decided to try construction instead of destruction for a change.
And built a compost-castle. 24th April, 2004

a pile of cowpoo, collected on a saturday afternoon hilma standing on the pile of poo

About 6 weeks later.... 4th June

The collector unit back in action, the piles of poo gathered in April were finally collected.

Aebi and collector approaching poo-pile Aebi and collector driving over poo-pile dried cow poo being shot into the collector unit

Being old, the manure was dry. Collection thus resulted in a fine dust that blew everywhere and covered everything - including me. Leaving me quite literally covered in sh*t, from head to boot-toe.

More images of cow poo :-)

tractor bucket full of poo Back at the fort, the sackloads of poo need to be transported to the manure heap.

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