#28 Down on the Farm

I’m at the hardware store the other day, one of the local ones, I always try to shop local even if it is a few pennies more. And I pick up some pansies while I’m there. And primroses of course. They were only 99¢ and as Old McDonalds knows, even on the farm anything under a buck sells like hot peanuts. Not stopping to ponder why a hardware store is even carrying flowers I amble over to what I first assume are the gravel and sand bags stacked up against the side of the building, thinking maybe this is the year to put in a new patio extension. It’s then that I find myself staring at a giant bag of potting soil—and garden mulch and various types of fertilizer and defoliants. Okay, I say, get with it Funny Guy, the old hardware store is now a lawn and garden center too. Fair enough, how many saws can you buy in your life? Stands to reason a store’s got to have a renewable consumer merchandise resource as well. That’s when I was diverted again. This time by a bag of steer manure. And next to it a bag of chicken manure. And next to that a bag of horse manure. And next to that a bag of pig manure. Wow, I think, what a great commercial tag: “They got all kinds of crap at Bob’s hardware store.”
It makes a person proud to be a part of our great culture. Not only do we have entire warehouse-type store chains devoted to pet supplies. Not only is it possible to find three big box chains devoted to paper clips and folders and staples. But now even the mom and pop hardware stores think it’s important to delineate and retail the excremental offerings of different varieties of animal. And apparently it’s no chicken-spit business either. The push away from chemical lawn and garden products due to the toxic load they added to our environment has made the rush to all-natural the NASCAR race of the home garden world. Mark my words. Jeff Gordon or the Lesser Petty will be hawking all-natural peanut-fed Georgia hog manure on the next circuit. Look for a pink pig decal on their uniforms.
Still, I have to wonder. Chicken manure I get. Pig manure I get. But Steer manure? How, pray tell, do they tell? Is steer manure significantly different from cow manure? Are the delicate droppings of a heifer sweeter than the steaming mounds of a pounding-hoofed bull? Do they keep the fields separate? Is the odor somehow distinct? Is dis stink worse than dat stink? Is there an individual whose job it is to collect the various doodlings, grade them, and bag them, each in their ass-igned scat-egory?
And is there a union of cow-pie collectors? An organization that has meetings? And do they open the meetings with a bell that goes—dung.
And is their national holiday St Paddy’s day?
Forgive me lord.
America, ya gotta love it.