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seasons. By this sort of practice most families got some manure, although the latrine owner would be able to manure his fields more heavily than his poorer neighbours.
Obviously also, a successful latrine demanded a heavy and regular supply of ash. Usually the latrine enclosure included incinerator grounds where those very few articles such as worm-eaten wood and rotten rope, no longer usable, nor able to be converted to pig food or dog food, were burnt by the latrine owner for the village. This provided one source of ash, as did the ash from the domestic stoves. Latrine owners were always short of ash, as household ash from domestic stoves was a valuable fertiliser in its raw state, and would be used as such by poorer families and not handed over to the latrine owner (it was used in much the same way as prepared powdered manure from the latrine). In some cases, the latrine owner would send his children out to cut down weeds and unprofitable wood to burn on the incinerator ground to increase the supply of ash. Ash was one reason why the mountains were burnt off each spring: while the wish to deny shelter to tigers was certainly present, burning off was always followed by the youngsters of the village going out to the mountains to sweep up the ash-rich dust into baskets for use either as fertiliser in its own right or for adding to the latrine store.
Latrines usable for defecation could not be so simply provided in the fields as could simple urinals. In most cases, villagers would return to the latrine on the outskirts of the village. However, a few simple bamboo and matting sheds were provided in the fields. These were usually provided on stilts over water so that the feces would drop through gaps in the flooring into the water. This was most frequently done by owners of fishponds (the raw feces forming excellent fish food), or by owners of a whole series of fields, who would be certain to benefit from any latrine built over the canal that carried irrigation water to their fields, the movement of the water diluting and so removing the danger of the rawness of the manure.
The richest of all forms of fertiliser from human wastes, however, came from the fishing boats. These each had latrines from where the wastes dropped into large barrels. In these barrels, urine, feces, fish guts, and other organic wastes were allowed