Yesterday I tossed around a lot of horse manure. No, I was not writing, or sitting at a bar offering opinions. I was gardening.
I was preparing the soil, a central, if sluggish, part of the vegetable gardening processs. Horse manure is "natural" fertilizer, which, when applied to the ground in the winter, can lead to fat, juicy homegrown tomatoes in the summer.
Malcom Gladwell has documented in his well received book "Outliers" that no one succeeds in life's major undertakings without help. So to secure the horse manure I relied on John Polhemus.
John is a man who has tilled the soil both as commerical grower and recreational gardener for almost 40 years. I had just finished reading Verlyn Klinkenborg's column in yesterday's New York Times, praising the value of allying yourself with an "old gardener," when John rolled up to my house in his pickup truck.
Not only did John have a "real truck," with a stick shift, and a rusted crescent wrench sticking out of what used to be the glove compartment, he also had another prized commodity in urban agriculture: a source of horse manure.
John had once served as security guard at a stable where some Baltilmore arabbers, vendors who sell produce from horse drawn carts, keep their animals.
John easily navigated his truck to the stables, a spot tucked under an overpass in a West Baltimore labyrinth of dead-end streets and rail sidings. There he was greeted warmly both by Charlie, the stable keeper, and the horses.
Soon we were standing in a gardener's equivalent of "high cotton," a dumpster loaded with horse manure and straw. As we shoveled "the goods" into the pickup, horses frolicked in the fenced yard.
Once the truck was filled with our steaming cargo, Charlie cadged a ride with us, and we chugged through the city streets. On Sunday morning it was a tableau of immaculately dressed churchgoers and men in hooded sweatshirts hanging on street corners.
After dropping Charlie off at a produce depot on Fulton Street, we arrived at the community gardens in Druid Hill Park, where John and I rent plots. There we were joined by a family of fellow gardeners, Hal Pollard, Chris Myers, and their two children, Ned, and Lucy.
We wheelbarrowled the manure to various garden plots.
Gardening requires much manual labor, a point my aching joints reminded me when I got back to my house.
I opened the fridge, looking for cold solace. I had variety of chilled beers to choose to from.
Somehow a Backdraft Brown caught my eye, It is a mild, slightly toasty ale from Hook & Ladder Brewing Company in Silver Spring. It was a good midday beer. After the hours of shoveling a brown beer seemed to fit the day's theme.
Tossing horse manure, then draining a smooth ale, was a pleasant way to spend a February Sunday. As I sat in my recliner, legs aloft, beer drained, I looked forward, in the coming months, to another rendezvous of gardening and beer.
Any other opinions of Backdraft brown? Any other beer-drinking gardeners? If so, what are your favorite post-gardening brews?
Are there any other friends of horse manure out there?
Sometimes a horse is more than a horse. When it is a Clydesdale, it is a marketing icon.