Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
It's a crappy job, but you'd never know by smiles
Ever wondered how you get a dozen high school students to spend an afternoon shovelling bison poop?
Easy: just don't tell 'em till it's too late. "We did not know we were going to do this," said Kristen Sinclair-Henderson, 20, wrinkling her nose as she heaved a chunk of bison dung onto the back of a farm cart at FortWhyte Alive on Thursday. "They told us at lunch today... 'oh, you'll need boots today!' "
Boots, gloves and shovels, because this wasn't just dirty work; this was a serious harvest. In coming weeks, the brown and crumbling fruit of the Gordon Bell students' labour will be composted and turned into fertilizer for FortWhyte Alive's expansive veggie farm.
Lots and lots of fertilizer, that is. The dung, left by FortWhyte's herd of 30 bison over the winter, lay thick underfoot; after an hour of collecting poop, "you can't even tell we've been out here (clearing it)," laughed farm program manager Ian Burnett, surveying the mountains of half-basketball-sized droppings still on the field. Hey, it's not for lack of trying. Although the students were originally a little grossed out by the idea of harvesting poop, by the end of the afternoon they were grabbing and tossing it with only their gloved hands. "Now they're laughing, and they've been working since we got out here," Burnett said. "I hear more laughing than anything else. It's going really well."
The success isn't really a surprise. Since 2003, FortWhyte Alive has invited kids from Winnipeg's inner city out to tend the crops and livestock at its attached farm. The program has even turned some city kids into serious farmhands: Rocky Young, 22, graduated from Gordon Bell last year. Now he's back to volunteer at the farm and plans to keep working there until the fall.
Before FortWhyte, the city kid didn't have much of a taste for the farm life, he said. Now, he looks forward to spending his Thursdays catching chickens, digging post holes and pulling weeds. "I love it out here. It's beautiful," Young said, squinting at the dung piles laid out across stubbly fields.
He leaned on a poop-covered shovel. "And I love everything that we do out here. Well, besides this. This is kind of crappy."
No pun intended, of course.
melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 9, 2010 A9
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