Chris and Andrae are walking two young Highland heifers round the children’s farmyard practicing to show them. One lets go and Chris asks me to clean it up. No problem, I’m used to this by now. I go for brush, spade and barrow. You’re probably aware of Indonesian elephant Gamelan Orchestras, well this cow had similar artistic aspirations but for her it was the art of Jackson Pollock. With the effortless unconcern that only cows can achieve when shitting she had splattered a fifteen-foot canvas in green. The central high-energy trail was surrounded on all sides by a firework display of splats radiating hither and dither. I set to work. The brush was immediately gummed up with green slurry and using it just spread green all over. The spade scraped it up but due to the liquid consistency it just slid off again, and what was left on gummed up the spade in a sticky emerald mess. In desperation I scraped then pushed it on the spade with my boot and slung what little I collected in the barrow. By this point the barrow, brush, spade and my boot were all covered in sticky green. I was dealing with the excrement equivalent of printers ink. I got a bucket of water. In my imagination the water would wash the yard clean. It didn’t. It simply diluted the green so it could go further. I brushed it, but that just added the slime on the brush and thickened the colour. But it did make the coverage more even. I got another bucket of water and swilled it all over. This only produced numerous rivers of green that trickled across the yard towards the chicken hutches. By now much of my life had been devoted to this task and I was still being defeated by cow shit. Break time. Phew! I left never to return. I did though collect a sack full of donkey poo to give to Mothermouse on the occasion of our Donkey Poo wedding anniversary, which is eight years by the way. The veg will be delighted, evidence, if it were needed, that the shit chain of creation travels in the opposite direction to the food chain.
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