One of the best things about being an Organic Farmer in East Texas is that everyone thought we were crazy.  I mean how can you grow anything without chemical fertilizers and pesticides? 

They forget that that's how almost everything was grown before the end of World War II.  The way I understand it after VJ Day, big business still had to make money so the bomb factories switched over to making fertilizers and chemical plants to pesticides. 

One of the problems we had to solve was a way to get cheap fertilizer. We had spent the first fall making compost piles and we were always searching for free nitrogen sources to put in the piles. We had a local horse stable where we could get all the stall sweepings we could haul away but we were always on the lookout for additional sources.

Our younger brother Richard came down from Kansas one weekend.  He too thought we were crazy but was interested when we showed him what we were doing.  That evening we decided to go into town for dinner and Steve drove the van with Richard, his kids and me riding along.  Dad, Laura and Richard's wife, Joyce, followed in Richard's car.

  In town we passed the Palestine Mall and noticed a small circus had set up in the parking lot.  We drove slowly by so the kids could watch the workers moving the animals around and the kids were fascinated being close up and personal with the elephants.  Suddenly Steve yelled, "Elephant dung!"

We hastily explained to Richard the idea of adding elephant dung to our compost heap and the benefits of doing so. Richard couldn't believe it when Steve drove into the lot, got out and looked in the dumpsters.  He went over to one of the circus workers and asked to see the manager.  Steve asked the guy if he could take the dung and explained our reasons for wanting it. The manager laughed and said, "You know you’re the first person in this area to ask for it, but YES take all you want."  Richard was so embarrassed that when we went back to the farm to get the pickup that he wouldn't come back with us to help get this windfall.  Steve crawled in the dumpster and shoveled out the elephant dung.

In another dumpster there was an abundance of tiger and lion dung. Yet another bonanza as you will see later.

 We added the elephant dung to our compost pile and it did indeed make a hot fertilizer but you cannot use carnivore dung in a compost heap. We had another idea in mind for it. We dropped the lion and tiger dung along the edges of our fields and even though all the farmers around us had problems with deer in their fields we never had that problem.  The deer smelled the dung and knew there were large predators around.

We told our potential customers about our elephant compost and the spreading of the lion and tiger dung and they loved the story.  We also told them we had a farm dog that kept the bears and elephants away then we would point at our 5 pound Chihuahua named Chi Chi and say that's her job.

I’m sure the folks around Palestine are still talking about the Crazy Organic Farmers.