O The SMELL of fresh country air. Pic. complete with smell

Two of these trucks have been spreading slurry across the road from us on a 200A farm. Been doing it for 3 days now, since the hay has been harvested. Suposed to be mid 90s here tomarrow and thursday, and the breeze is coming up the lake from that direction. They spread the corn and bean ground this spring, but that was knifed in. This is sprayed on top of the hay stubble. Some of the neighbors are bitching, but they're transplants from the city. If they dont like it "tough Shi##, leave" I'm just glad we still have farms operating in this town. and will hold my breath for the next couple of days until we get rain to eliminate the smell. To get your own wiff, from the pic. just tap on the Advanced Posting tool bar. HeHe,PU

Good post.

Lot better than the smell of bad silage just a couple miles north of me, bad bad hailstorm went through at 3:00am, we have similar temps and humidity here in southern MN, and what I hear was a 5 mile by 35 mile hail storm. The couple miles I drove through, just devistating. Smells like bad silage already this afternoon.

My farm is ok, it was 2 miles north of it started. Feel for those folks, some dairy farmers, and it's almost centered on anethanol plant, lot if need for corn there, and can't buy from the neighbor - they got wiped out too!

Bad deal.

Your bad smells is at least the small of money.

--->Paul

I never got the practice of applying to a field if you don't disc or knife in. I always thought if it wasn't disced in within 12 hours it lost the majority of it's nitrogen value? I understand why you wouldn't disc it in on your hay field. Is it because it is straight up liquid and not a semi-solid that at least the majority of it will seep into the soil?

they do that quite often here too... Our town is at the lowest point and they always do it just ahead of rain so the heavy air just kinda blankets the town... We had a guy with hogs next door for the first 3 years here and it was pretty rough, the cow poo is OK.....

My grandpa always used to say when he hauled cow manure, "sure smells like money". I like the smell of cattle manure though, compared to any other livestock manure.
Kow Farmer

A big dairy to the south of us has put in a digester and burns the methane in a BIG v12 engine making electricity. He told me the manure he spreads after that doesn't smell much. They were spreading it on hay ground up wind of us the other day and by golly I never smelled it.

Cow manure doesn't bother me at all.The farmer down the road usually spreads chicken poop on his field between cuts.Now that smell isn't my favorite but I don't complain.

Vito

I was in Faribault this morning at 7:00. It had rained. I suspect it was north of there??

(quoted from post at 14:51:29 06/19/12) Cow manure doesn't bother me at all.The farmer down the road usually spreads chicken poop on his field between cuts.Now that smell isn't my favorite but I don't complain.

Vito

Click to expand...

neighbor down the road keeps pidgeons (feeds them so they roost at his place..... grows about 2 acres of wheat to feed them and fertilizes his garden and the fields with the poo... That's pretty smelly too.....

This dairy operation is milking about 400H plus raise replacements. Their slurry storage is limited, "Harvestor Slurry Stores". With comercial fertilizer approching $800/T the slurry is a real plus for their operating budget. The land they are spreading has also been neglected for several years. It is owned by a land investor, and he is only conserned about his bottom line. This farm was a showcase in the 80s, now the barns are colapsing and the 1800s farm house is unlivable. "That stinks worse than the smell of slurry" There are way too many family farms growing up to weeds and buildings colapsing. Sorry sight to me.

In my neighborhood we have any flavor you want. Turkey manure, chicken, hog and cattle. The turkey stuff is piled in the open and composted for awhile. You can smell it for miles when it's spread but the smell doesn't last long. The chicken manure comes out of a compost shed at a 6.5 million bird layer facility and is piled in the field and then spread soon after. It's mighty ripe but doesn't seem to last long. The farmer is required to work it in right away. Hog manure is knifed in and isn't too bad depending on how well it's covered. My neighbor to the north piled cattle manure last summer and then had it spread just across the fence north of me, a whole quarter section of it. The wind just happened to be coming from the northeast for the first time in weeks so we caught the full aroma. I darned near went to a motel for a couple of nights and it took awhile for the smell to leave our buildings. I'm not complaining because we are deep into ag country and this is part of country life.

These manure smells aren't constant by any means but our noses can tell when it's 'in season'. Jim

Centered on Lafayette, more or less. Giibbon, Bernadotte, all small towns, rural farmland mostly.

They will have a meeting in Lafayette on the 21st, talk over with Extension on what the options are to replant or what.

--->Paul

There actually is a machine that can knife liquid manure into hay ground with very little surface disturbance. google "Aerway".

I am very familiar with digesters, and yes they turn the Smell into Electric power and heat in two ways. One methane runs engines that turn generators, and two the engine and digester make heat which can be used in such things as greenhouse operations. One of our local Small Cities , utilizes a digester in their sewer treatment plant to power it. There is all kinds of opertunities to use the energy from all kinds of Poo and garbage. Look at the torch pipes on old landfills. We have also had houses in the area blow up from methane gas escaping from our shale ground. "{Heaven Forbid that we Frack for it}" and utilize that energy source. Too many greenies have move here.

Good post ACG.
And good replys too. It requires a bit of discomfort to our neighbors for us to feed, house and provide all kinds of gadgets for daily life.
I don't live in the country near the manure but my back yard abuts the 16' high factory wall of a high tech foundry.
Often enough I get the odor of burning plastic wafting through my yard.
It's offensive to smell but I am kind of glad to tolerate it as I know there are 50 or more busy workers still casting cool parts on the other side of that wall.
A few of us city people do get it.
Photos are of my back yard and some Marvel Schebler carbs they cast on occasion. I think I prefer the burning plastic to the manure.

BTDT They don't work in our limestone ledge rock soils. I sold Areway equipment, Built concrete weights to fit the frames, but they won't penetrate our ground. They were only benificial in the valley edges where there was heavy clay and only the organic guys used them, but they needed all the help they could get!!! ( poor way to farm in my opinion)

I used to live in a paper mill town. Mill was the only major industry. Most people said it smelled like ham and eggs.

Oh yes here in Wisconsin we have 4 seasons Winter, Construction, manure and winter's coming.

I have one and works great. I have to us it because Alpacas have padded feet, and don't dig up the pasture like Cattle and Horses. I have always used it in the spring, but going to try in next week on a test spot with the grass 8" high.

Hang out the fly paper because they will be there shortly. Fun to see how many you can catch on one roll of fly paper. The window sill is where they generally choose to die.

The smell of burning plastic gives me a sick headache. And one of the worst smells I have to contend with is field chemical spraying and people in town spraying their lawns Pee Yoo!
Manure smell don't bother me. It's like skunk. It just stinks.

This is a family site. While I can appreciate the way you feel about the citiots, there's no need for coarse language.

I think most people were being kind.

I've smelled paper mills.

Never got how anybody could stand living near one.

What, you don't like the smell of sulphurous, acidic fumes with a heady bouquet of fresh pine?

Well I do - just not every day : )

- always wondered if people actually got used to that smell.

I imagine that, like anything, you probably do. But must be tough to get to that point.

No, never completely.

They just need to get used to it....a few years back, when living in Iowa in a small rural community, we had a large scale hog confinement operating a few miles from the house.

When the wind was "right" it seems that odor was strong enought to burn your nose and make your eyes water....

....I asked a retired farm neighbor how long it took to get used to that "pig odor" and his reply was...."what odor"....time did tell.

Cow and horse manure isn"t so bad.

Tim

Anybody still casting old style carb bodies is a good neighbor no matter what.

I kind of like it too--it reminds me of my boyhood, as we always had a bunch of cows. And compared to
hog or chicken manure, cow poop is a downright mild odor.

Years ago there was a fairly large chicken farm about a mile from our house. I don"t think they moved manure all the time, but when they did, we really smelled it. I don"t know if they charged the land owners for the manure when the chicken farmers spread it, but lots of the fields in the area benefited greatly from the manure. I wish the chicken farm was still in operation, since some of my ground could sure use the fertilizer.

One time the chicken farm got their big "honey wagon" stuck real bad in the mud in the low spot in a neighbor"s field. They had to unload the liquified chicken manure in one big pile in order to be able to unstick the honey wagon. The owner tried to spread the pile out, but for years nothing would grow where the pile had been, and that area continued to smell like rotten chicken manure when I drove by. I always wondered what kind of discussions there were between the chicken farmer and the land owner, and what kind of a settlement they came up with. The chicken farm closed within a few years of that mess, and now the buildings are used to store boats.

I could put up with the smell just fine, but I am pretty sure my neighbors would gripe. My area is not so rural as it used to be, and there are many more people nearby living on 5 to 20 acre parcels.

I try to be a good neighbor, so I suppose I would forgo spreading a whole lot of manure on my property if it was still available. Not many cows around here anymore, and if people have a few, they use the manure on their own property. I need a little manure for my garden, but I may have to settle for horse poop, which IMHO is really inferior to cow, chicken or even hog manure for fertilizer.

But in real farm country, spread manure is part of the package--it is going to happen and it needs to happen. If neighbors cannot accept that, then they should not have ever moved to the country.

Cow manure isn"t bad at all. Chicken manure is tolerable after a couple of days. But hog manure is pretty tough--the odor seems to hang around for a really long time. But I suppose a person can get used to almost anything if you have to!

When the chicken factory came in around here 16 years ago and folks started build'n houses alot of folks hit the fan. Buddy of mine a few miles up the road put up four houses. Old lady who lived a half mile away started call'n and fuss'n about the smell two weeks before the first flock was put in them!!! She told every one she met for several years what a jerk the guy was for put'n up those chicken houses and how bad it was to live with a half mile East of her home. Most of the folks she told that too never knew that her and her old man years before had one of the first concrete floor hog houses in this part of the world and at one time they kept 40+ SOWS and grew the pigs out to market weight not 100' out her back door to the west. She even called the law on the guy several times because HER dog was get'n dead birds from his conpost shed and bringing them to her yard, any bets on where her soon there after missing dog ended up? After a few years she moved to town.

Dave

Nice picture of a tank truck load of "brain-refill" for our legislators.

Thanks.
If you look real close in the first picture - between the tree and the tires you can kinda see a yellow hose coming out of the factory wall. They put a 3/4" air tap there for me so I have access to a 75 hp screw drive compressor 24/7/365. They are great neighbors.

I thought they were hauling away election campaign rhetoric. I suppose they are going to be busy this summer!

Christopher