The Best Of Muck

As well as providing a giant breakfast bowl to sustain birds during winter, the muck heap is a valuable tool in the battle against soil depletion

- Tim Field

IN the quiet of a crisp winter’s morning a gentle plume rises from a field edge. The remnants of a bonfire? No, it is steam rising off a mighty muck heap. A community of billions of fungi, bacteria and invertebrates are industriously composting away, letting off steam in the process. The larger beasties wriggle back and forth, aerating and mixing the outer layers, exposing a few weed seeds and husks on the surface. The combination of warmth, bugs and worms, with a side order of seeds and grains, make this a bird feeder of gargantuan proportions. Every rough shoot should cherish a good muck heap – a giant breakfast bowl to sustain birds through a cold snap.

Cow muck is a familiar scent around stock farms on windless winter days, particularly when it’s being shunted around. The beeping of a reversing Loadall is reminiscent of yard scraping, mucking out and turning. In an ideal world, muck is manoeuvred into a covered store before being carted to field when a suitable weather window appears. In well-endowed farmyards a large, concrete pad and silos will allow regular turning without damaging soil structure. Otherwise, it is in-field composting, heaped on a firm piece of ground far from ditches, drains and watercourses. It is turned every six weeks to aerate.