The Shit-Shoveller’s Lament
It’s all right being a gardener,
In fact it’s one of life’s pleasures,
But it takes a real lot of hard work -
You can’t afford to be a man of leisure.
Take today, just for an instance,
It turned all sort of spring-like, to be sure,
Which could mean only one thing –
It was time to go get the manure.
For a garden needs nutrients,
If it’s to grow veggies and be dynamic,
And you can’t be using chemicals,
If you want your produce to be organic.
So you’ve got to have something natural
To dig in with your fork and your trowel,
Which means – and there’s no escaping this –
You need stuff that fell from an animal’s bowel.
Now some swear by cow, and some by the sheep:
It doesn’t really matter whichever you do,
But I have my personal preference,
And that happens to be horse-poo.
So I called in at to my local farm,
To inspect a steaming pile that I’d spotted,
And to dig out several hundredweight,
Of that dark-looking substance, well-rotted.
I took my fork and my shiny new spade,
And I slid that compost into many a sack.
I shovelled that shit for all I was worth,
Until it felt like I was breaking my back.
I weighed the car down, till it sat on its springs:
I couldn’t get more of it in if I’d tried,
But if the stuff had an aroma out in the field,
You can’t imagine how bad it stunk there inside!
That brown sticky stuff just gets everywhere:
On your gloves, and your hands, and your wellies,
On your legs, your hat and your jacket,
Till, finally, every single part of you’s smelly.
But there’s one thing I had to remember,
And I hope that it’s obvious to see:
Even though I’ve been shovelling shit,
At least I was getting all of it free.
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