By this time, we find ourselves in the situation of woodstove owners who don't address the firewood situation until cold weather sets in, by which time all the seasoned wood has been snapped up by those with more foresight. Here in the heart of horse and cow country, you might think it would be easy to secure a pile of barnyard bounty. Certainly there's no shortage of the stuff lying about in the pastures. But, a cow pie in the cart is worth 10 in the pasture. And, as every veteran gardener knows, manure, like fine wine, must be aged to perfection.
Fresh manure can fry tender plants.
So, ideally we hope to locate a pile neither too raw nor too rocky, and to have it wafted onto our truck by someone with a front-end loader. Unfortunately, even in these enlightened times it's not always easy to line up the right pile with the right truck and the friend with the front-end loader. Thus, when the situation gets desperate, we resort to SYO tactics. And it's considerably more time consuming. We don't need no stinking aerobics.