The Barrel
In North Carolina there is a fifty gallon plastic barrel full of chicken manure and water out in the back yard, one of the last troublesome remnants from the former tenant and I'm not real sure how to go about dealing with it. A neighbor with a garden might be interested but I suspect they would feel the same trouble I do, that is how to move it without sloshing the top layer of water all over you, or how to remove the top layer of water without an unfortunate result.
I have imagined drilling a hole in the barrel to remove some water but not knowing how much water is in there or being able to figure out the projectile force of the ensuing stream I am hesitant to go that route. Rubber gloves and a small handled bucket I could use and then dip out until the water is gone or enough of it to roll the barrel away somewhere with the handcart seems like an ok idea. In its resting state the barrel does not give off any odor and it may be that as manure it is thoroughly processed and the stink will be minimal but uncertainy still resides deep inside me. Years ago in a job that had me walking across vast stretches of East Texas farm and woodland I came upon a fairly large commercial chicken coop and etched pretty deeply into that part of my brain that assists with the gag reflex is the memory of the crude effluvium drain running out of the coop and through a shallow ditch alongside it. That part of my brain and I have come to an understanding that if I won't visit it, it won't visit me.
If you have ever siphoned gas out of a tank you know it is close to impossible not to get at least a little in your mouth so I have ruled that out completely.
I have it on my list to call Bruce and Pizza to haul away the several hundred bagged pounds of non burnable remnant which I have raked from the burn pile and a couple of other junk graves on the property, the bones and cans and plastic and assorted metal parts and rubber hoses and twine and discarded toys and spent shotgun shells just floating up on their own over time, and I'm sure they would deal with it without out all this namby pamby considering but I hate to lay it on them, kind of in the same way you straighten up the worst of your mess before calling the cleaning lady.
I guess I'll just put it off and deal with something else today. Might drive into town and get breakfast and then over to the Home Improvement to pick up some flexible heating duct to replace that section or two into which mice moved and infected my interior air with the aroma of their urine and feces and, I daresay, their dead selves.
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