This extraordinarily mild and dry winter has enabled us to accomplish some remarkable feats. After the past few winters, we deem it a minor miracle to simply get into the car and drive without first selling our souls for snow-free roads.           

Another remarkable achievement for me is the completion of my barn cleaning project. Normally, the very idea of such a thing would be unthinkable.

A normal winter would have tormented us with several bouts of liquid nitrogen-like cold by now. Such temperatures would have made my barn’s manure as hard as iron ore. But the mild conditions have kept things thawed, which meant there was no good excuse for me not to work.

The mere thought of hand-cleaning the ancient dung from our old gambrel barn should be enough to make one question one’s sanity. It appeared to be a monumental task, akin to emptying Lake Superior with a 5-gallon bucket.

My pace was slow but steady: haul and spread one load today, perhaps two tomorrow. Rest several days to allow the body to recuperate and repeat.     

The only help I received was from Sandy, our Golden Retriever, who superintended. He would watch me for a while and sniff around a bit, then leave once the real work began. Sandy would have a bright future in corporate management if only he had opposable thumbs.

The passage of time had made the manure as dense as depleted uranium. Picking up a single shovelful often caused my back wheels to lift off the ground.

The distance between the manure and the manure spreader gradually grew into quite a walk. This necessitated the purchase of a wheelbarrow and the construction of a wooden gangway to facilitate the emptying of said wheelbarrow into the spreader.

My carpentry skills closely resemble those of Wile E. Coyote. I’m simply glad that an OSHA inspector didn’t drop by the jobsite.  

The barn cleaning project began to feel like an infinite slog. The removal of a single load would result in no perceptible progress.             

I would like to say that all this extra exercise caused my already-massive muscles to attain ever-more more bulk and that I could have intimidated the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I would like to say that, but it wouldn’t be true. Alas! The additional bulginess in my abdominal area proved to be not to be from shoveling manure into the spreader, but from shoveling mashed potatoes into my maw.

The seemingly endless toil allowed ample time to ruminate. How many cow hours did it take to give the bars of the wooden stanchions their highly polished patina? This was my Grandpa Nelson’s barn and is where my dad and uncles worked and grew up. How many youthful dreams were voiced inside these ancient wooden walls?

The finish line finally appeared on the horizon. Just three loads remained! In one day, and with Herculean effort, I wheeled out the last wheelbarrow of the super-massive dung. I then made the mistake of calculating the exact size of the just-completed task.