Manure Wall Or Compost Fence: Fetid Tale Of Michigan ‘Fuss Fence’

LODI TOWNSHIP, MI — There are two ways to look at a 250-foot-long wall of cow manure separating two farm properties in a southeast Michigan township:

One, the “fuss fence” made of cow feces has the stink of animosity after a property dispute last year; or two, it’s a harmless compost fence. In other words, one person’s stinking pile of compost is another’s steaming pile of stuff polite people don't talk about in the living room.

There’s only one way to smell it, though.

And that’s with a pinched nose to block as much of what Lodi Township farmer Wayne Lambarth says is the cow poop wall’s powerful stench, Detroit news station WJBK reported.

The smell of manure — farmers often call it the “smell of money” — isn’t unusual in this rural section of Washtenaw County.

Lambarth’s neighbor, who wasn’t identified, has cattle. Cattle poop. The poop piles up over the winter, freezing into hard bricks of dung that practically require a chisel and ax to dispose of — even if farmers were willing to put themselves out there in weather that will freeze their faces and fingers in seconds.

Usually, they just wait for all that piled up poop to thaw in the spring and then do something useful with it. That’s totally within the scope of what’s acceptable in country living.

But this?

This figurative middle finger fashioned of feces?

It stinks, Lambarth told WJBK’s Charlie Langton. Usually, Lambarth said, his neighbor spreads manure as fertilizer on his fields and pastures.

That’s another fact of farm life. Sure, if it rains or is hot, that can almost take your breath away for a while, but it's a proven, environmentally sound agricultural practice. Farmers have been feeding their land with manure for 8,000 years — much longer than researchers originally thought — probably after subsistence farmers linked lush growth to the animal dung dropped or piled there.

Yeah, Lambarth acknowledged, he grew up around the smells of agriculture. He mows the lawn on the family home place and leaves almost as quickly as he arrives, so the poop fence is only a temporary annoyance.

But the situation really stinks for his renters, he told Langton.

“When you have renters who have to live with this every day …,” he started. “I come here to mow the lawn.”

One of the tenants, who wasn’t identified, told Langton the smell is ruining her morning communes with nature. Her roommate added, “You can’t leave the window open because the whole upstairs will smell like it.” Warm weather is the worst. The fetid odor wafts along in the wind, giving the tenants nowhere to escape without filling their nostrils with it.

As Langton was interviewing the tenants, the architect of the stinking pile drove by in a four-wheeler. He denied he had put up a poop wall but acknowledged he had built a compost fence. When Langton told him Lambarth didn’t like it, the neighbor complained he didn’t like the price of milk, either.

Minus the reporter at the scene and an explanation about what the price of milk has to do with a pile of feces, this is how fuss fences often work in farming country. There’s not a lot of common ground. That's why fences are put up — even if they are usually made of wire or boards.

And speaking of ground, Lambarth probably can’t do much about the fence because the neighbor put it on his own property, concluded Langton, an attorney, broadcast journalist and legal analyst for WJBK.

Some of the lingering questions don’t smell so good, though. A big one:

Is it a good idea to eat vegetables fertilized with manure compost?

For sure, says Oregon State University Extension Service’s Melissa Fery.

Farm manure is a low-cost fertilizer packed with nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and other nutrients plants need to thrive. Using manure as fertilizer is “a wonderful way to utilize nutrients instead of creating a pile that is not getting used and could be harmful to water quality,” Fery, a teacher in the Extension Service’s small farms program, said in a news release.

It not only improves the soil naturally, but also cuts down on the amount of water needed for a garden, Fery said. But, she cautioned, the integrity of a compost fence depends on the animal’s diet and on the type of bedding in which they deposited their poop.

Meanwhile, Lambarth continues to sniff around state and local ordinances for a sweet ending to this odoriferous version of a fence feud.