If I don’t have a reason to visit Ellsworth Feed and Seed on Saturday morning, I invent one. Maybe I need mulching straw, black oil sunflower seeds for the birds, a bale of potting soil, seeds of this or that vegetable variety, or to check if the seed potatoes are in yet. I always need something.
I drive my old Hyundai hatchback past the resident flock of mallards dabbling in the flooded field along the edge of the drive, navigate through a minefield of potholes filled with water deep enough to stock with trout, and park between two pickups, one loaded with bales of hay and the other being loaded with sacks of feed. Before I can get out, there’s Harvard, the store’s owner, bearing down with a wide grin.
“Reeser, I’ve got to tell you,” he calls out as he approaches, stopping at the nose of my car, inches from a pallet of composted sheep manure, slapping his hand on the top bag, “I’ve waited 30 months for this day, two and a half years, and here it is!” And so Harvard and I spend the next 10 minutes talking manure.
It is early, 7 a.m., and Harvard has time to talk. Later, as he moves rapidly from loading dock to truck or car, carrying a 50-pound sack under each arm, he will have time for little more than a greeting nod.
When Harvard talks, I listen, and learn something new about gardening. I mention that I could not recall ever running across composted sheep manure for sale. This product, Harvard tells me, is produced in Canada, and it is unbeatable as a vegetable garden soil amendment. Unfortunately, one reaction to the mad cow disease epidemic of a few years ago was a halt to importing of sheep manure into the United States. We both express dismay that the government can’t distinguish between a cow and a sheep.
Harvard sells just about every brand of bagged compost you can name. They all have their following. So when I’m told that of all the choices, he thinks this sheep manure is the best, I know that I am getting the inside track on something extraordinary. I listen as he explains that he has never had better crops than when he uses the sheep manure, and this includes his crop of towering tobacco plants.
That’s right, Harvard grows tobacco in Maine — just for his own use. He also tried growing cotton, with less satisfying results. The man is always trying something new, always learning, always willing to share what he has learned.
Next thing I know, we’re loading six bags of composted sheep manure into the belly of the old rust bucket. As we load, Harvard tells me that he has an exclusive on this sheep manure. At the moment he has plenty, but I suspect it will go fast if Harvard is telling everyone what he has told me.
We go inside to settle up and the conversation turns to organic sources of nitrogen. I learn that the cost of blood meal has soared to such heights that Harvard won’t stock it, but he has cottonseed meal and alfalfa meal, both just as good. One entire wall of the store is lined with organic soil amendments. What is conspicuous in its absence is synthetic nitrogen in any form.
“That’s a thing of the past,” he says. “I only sell it for fertilizing hay fields and such, not to home gardeners.” Good news.
The parking lot is filling with earnest farmers and gardeners and the line at the cash register (cash or checks only, please) curves around sacks of bird seed, past racks of garden seed, and clear back to the horse supplies. No one is in a hurry. Everyone knows someone in front or behind and conversation runs the gamut. A sign on the wall says, “No Cell Phones Allowed.”
Driving home, I can’t wait to show Marjorie the sheep manure I’ve bought, then realize that there is no cause for her to be as elated as I am; she wasn’t there to hear Harvard talk about it. There is a sheep on the front of the bag, but nothing to explain why this composted manure is better than the brand of compost blend that sat on a pallet to the left or the composted cow manure on the pallet to the right.
Harvard says it is better, an opinion constructed from experience in his own garden. Good enough for me.
Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to rmanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.