A dairy farm is hopefully a profit making business, and my neighbor’s is no different in that respect. My dairy farmer neighbor, and certainly many hired workers, milk several hundred cattle. He sells milk to processors to earn a profit. All winter he has been storing cattle manure from those hundreds of cattle for use as fertilizer for his fields this year. It is stored in a giant pit, or lake, with added water to keep it in liquid form. Each spring the manure must be applied to his land as an aid to growth of his corn crop used as cattle feed.
The second photo is a couple of minutes later as I caught up to it, but making sure I was well off to the upwind side, as it progressed almost in slow motion across the field. I’m guessing that red tank is about 16’ long and 8’ in diameter.
The third photo I’m yet closer, as a good reporter should be, but I’m still not getting any too close to that honey wagon. That stuff is really flying as it is pumped out using power from the pulling tractor.
The fourth photo shows that the meadow has been drying out since the snow has melted as the tractor and spreader are both staying on the surface being buoyed up by those huge tires on both. The rig has progressed about half the field’s length now, and taken maybe five or six minutes to do so.
The fifth, and last, photo is merely a zoomed in photo to give you one last look without getting any closer to this rig. This was about 4:30 this afternoon. I expect to see tomorrow that the field was completed before dark. Last year this farm grew approximately 4,000 acres of dairy feed corn, and presumably will again this year. This meadow is no more than forty acres, or about 1% of what will be done.
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