The manure monorail

Busy day at Falling Downs.

I've got several brush piles along the fence line at the east side of the property that are just waiting for the torch. That's what I did today, took care of one of those brush piles.

That's a Falling Downs spring ritual that often leads to a bit of drama. You set that brush pile ablaze and before you know it 20 acres of dry grass is up in flames. Then you've got all kinds of hassles with the dweebs at the Township Office trying to explain how you thought your 2007 burn permit was still valid in 2012, not to mention the bill from the volunteer fire department.

Anyway, we managed a "controlled burn" (and here I might add that all my 20 acre grass fires have been "controlled burns", so stick that up your pipe and smoke it Mrs. Macdonald at the Township Office) without the involvement of the volunteer fire department, which made it an exceptionally happy day here at Falling Downs.

So after that busy day I had to take some down time in the Muskoka chair on the south side of the barn. It was nicely out of the North wind that was blowing today. That's when I got to thinking about the ingenuity that went into the manure monorail.

That Muskoka chair pretty much sits underneath the infrastructure for the manure monorail. I've only been the owner of Falling Downs for four years, and I'm guessing the monorail was defunct for thirty years or more before I got the place, but in its day it was a technological marvel.

The monorail has multiple spur lines to all corners of the barn. The idea was that you shovel the manure into a bucket that hangs from the monorail, then push the bucket out of the barn and tip it somewhere in the barnyard. The monorail has a swivel boom that can put your bucket of cow, pig, or chicken shit down pretty much anywhere within a 180 degree radius.

Nowadays that bucket has been replaced by a Bobcat. Barns no longer have interior stabling, because that slows down the skid-steer, and nobody except hobby farmers keeps anything other than beef cattle in one of these barns anyway.

But even though the bucket is long gone, the monorail still goes out to the barnyard. The boom creaks from side to side in the wind. It's a great place to sit and marvel at the way things used to be done.