Black Gold

In my childhood each afternoon after school we'd gather around the television set and watch shows like Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Little Rascals, and The Beverly Hillbillies.  In the Beverly Hillbillies, Jed's life changed along with Ely Mae, Jethro, and Granny's when Jed shot and discovered Black Gold or Texas Tea. You know the rest of the story.  They loaded up their truck and they moved to Beverly... Hills, that is... Swimming pools, movie stars.

Striking oil on the property sure would make farming profitable, but as of yet we haven't struck the black gold that Jed Clampett did.  However, we have discovered another type of black gold in the chicken coop.  Chicken Poop!  Many of our hens roost in chicken tractors out in the pasture and fertilize the grass.  The others roost in the hen house and their poop litters the floor beneath the roosts.  It piles up and composts.

The lure of chicken manure

Each spring and fall when putting in the new garden, I harvest the black gold from beneath the roosts, shoveling it into our garden wagon.  It is full of nitrogen rich chicken manure along with feathers.  I pull this into the garden and work it into the soil on each row prior to planting and work it in real good.

A load from the chicken commode

Chicken manure, if not composted, can be real "hot" and can burn your plants, so you have to be careful when using it.  I make sure that I never put fresh poop around the plants in the garden, but I've found that if it has composted for months, it doesn't burn the plants.  To the contrary, they 'green up' and look really healthy after application.  I will even take a handful of the black gold and put it around the base of the bigger plants to allow the slow release down to the root level following rains or waterings.

Side-dressing the broccoli

After applying the chicken manure in the garden soil prior to planting or side dressing the older plants, I turn on the sprinklers and allow the water to wash over the plants and distribute the chicken fertilizer into the soil and roots.

Watering it in

I haven't bothered sending the chicken manure off for an analysis, but it seems to be just right. Fertility produced right on site is an added bonus and continues the cycle of animals living off the land, eating grass and bugs, returning fertility to the soil to replace what they've consumed and the fertility that the plants have taken from the soil in growth.  It is a nice cycle of giving and taking.  The "Black Gold" we have on our farm will likely never make us rich, and there aren't any swimming pools or movie stars around, but our black gold is helping to make our soil rich.