Learn From Every Situation

Over the Winter we purchased a hydraulic dump trailer to haul manure in. Once a week I head to Green Mountain Compost to get rid of all the horse waste. During the winter months this isn't really an option as snow and cold make it difficult to haul, but in the summer months it means no giant manure pile and fewer flies around the barn.

When we first got the dump trailer back in December you can imagine I was pretty excited to use it. The first decent day I filled it up, but was unable to actually make the trip to Williston. I finally had the time and good weather a few days later. As we all know it had been cold, and I was a little concerned that the manure wouldn't actually come out of the trailer, but I decided to chance it and headed out.

When I got there and the trailer lifted, sure enough, the manure was frozen in place. In the next bay a grizzled old garbage truck driver saw me struggling and came over to help. He showed me how to bounce the trailer in an attempt to get the manure to break free. Unfortunately it didn't, and I ended up having to ask for help. One of the Green Mountain Compost staff scraped out the trailer with the bucket of a piece of heavy equipment.

Needless to say I was a tad embarrassed. I felt like a total idiot. Of course the manure had frozen. Of course it wouldn't come out of the trailer unaided. It is one of those situations I still look back on with that same sense of humiliation that I felt when it first happened.

Once the warmer weather hit, however, the trailer has worked wonderfully. I held my breath the first couple times I used it, but the manure just slid right out like butter. That is until mid summer and one day a large chunk of manure and bedding stuck in the top of the trailer. I didn't know what to do at first and had forgotten to bring a shovel with me to scrape it out. Then I thought back to my first trip and bounced the trailer like I had been shown. The manure at the top came loose and slid out.

If it hadn't been for that thoroughly embarrassing situation earlier in the year I wouldn't have learned that little trick and would be struggling with a shovel and scraping the bed of the trailer every time the manure gets stuck. This just reminded me that we can learn from every experience, especially those that are more difficult to go through at the time.