243
Once the latrine was full to the top of the plank partitions, after 2 or 4 weeks use, the owner would raise the planks and scrape out the latrine, heaping up the rich ash mixture on the adjacent drying ground for final drying in the sun. The ash mixture dried into rock hard dark grey lumps. When dry these were crushed to a powder by having a heavy wooden plank (often helped by having children stood on it) dragged backwards and forwards across them by a cow. The powder would store almost indefinitely if kept dry. For obvious reasons most villages forbade manure to be dried on the same drying grounds as were used for rice and vegetables, and usually each latrine would have a small walled off ground of its own.
Where the latrine was associated with cattle sheds, the animal manure and straw would be added to the latrine each day and covered with ash: in such circumstances the latrine would have to be cleared out weekly. The owner would often send out his children to pick up animal droppings from the fields and lanes to add to the manure building up in the latrine.
The powder produced in this way could be used as top dressing and packed in around seedlings, particularly of vegetables, or else could be scattered on top of the water let in to a rice field under preparation for planting, the water ensuring that the fertiliser was carried evenly to every corner of the field.
Obviously, animal manure could be used raw and dug into vegetable field beds before planting, but the opinion of villagers was that such unprepared manure was too rich and would burn young seedlings; it was only valuable if, after digging in, it could be left to rot down for some weeks before planting. Since time rarely allowed this, even poor families with no latrine of their own would rarely use raw animal manure. It must be remembered that a village house was very small and had no large private courtyard; heaps of animal manure maturing in a corner of a farmyard, so traditional in Europe, were just not feasible to anyone who did not own a latrine enclosure. More often poorer villagers would compound with a latrine owner, and hand over to him all the wastes of their animals and guarantee to him the custom of themselves and their families, in return for one or more buckets of prepared manure powder at the main planting.
243
Once the latrine was full to the top of the plank partitions, after 2 or 4 weeks use, the owner would raise the planks and scrape out the latrine, heaping up the rich ash mixture on the adjacent drying ground for final drying in the sun. The ash mixture dried into rock hard dark grey lumps. When dry these were crushed to a powder by having a heavy wooden plank (often helped by having children stood on it) dragged backwards and forwards across them by a cow. The powder would store almost indefinitely if kept dry. For obvious reasons most villages forbade manure to be dried on the same drying grounds as were used for rice and vegetables, and usually each latrine would have a small walled off ground of its own.
Where the latrine was associated with cattle sheds, the animal manure and straw would be added to the latrine each day and covered with ash: in such circumstances the latrine would have to be cleared out weekly. The owner would often send out his children to pick up animal droppings from the fields and lanes to add to the manure building up in the latrine.
The powder produced in this way could be used as top dressing and packed in around seedlings, particularly of vegetables, or else could be scattered on top of the water let in to a rice field under preparation for planting, the water ensuring that the fertiliser was carried evenly to every corner of the field.
Obviously, animal manure could be used raw and dug into vegetable field beds before planting, but the opinion of villagers was that such unprepared manure was too rich and would burn young seedlings it was only valuable if, after digging in, it could be left to rot down for some weeks before planting. Since time rarely allowed this, even poor families with no latrine of their own would rarely use raw animal manure. It must be remembered that a village house was very small and had no large private courtyard; heaps of animal manure maturing in a corner of a farmyard, so traditional in Europe, were just not feasible to anyone who did not own a latrine enclosure. More often poorer villagers would compound with a latrine owner, and hand over to him all the wastes of their animals and guarantee to him the custom of themselves and their families, in return for one or more buckets of prepared manure powder at the main planting
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