Posted on 11/18/2023 3:44:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
Many Minnesotans on social media seemed slightly confused about the manure-like odor that wafted through the state this week.
“Every fall, I pretty much smell it. And just because of my nature, the nature of my work, I noticed that pretty quickly,” said Melissa Wilson, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, who specializes in manure nutrient management and water quality.
Experts like Wilson say it’s a fairly straightforward phenomenon, and it actually happens quite often.
Come fall, farmers across the region lay out fertilizer in anticipation of the winter.
“We’re actually taking the nutrients that are generated from the animals and recycling it back to the fields so that it can be used for crop production in the next year,” Wilson said.
Typically that happens just before a big freeze, and the ground freezes over before the smell gets too noticeable; but when you get a cold snap like the one at the beginning of this month, followed by an unexpected bout of 60-degree weather, it’s the perfect way to carry those smells up into the air.
“It’s really unusual to have 70-degree temperatures in the middle of November, so that was probably why the smell was so strong,” said Matt Tarldsen with the MPCA.
Still, the phenomenon is perfectly natural and keeps the state’s agriculture alive and well.
“Yes, it stinks. And that’s kind of one of the drawbacks of this type of work,” said Wilson, “But just reminding [people] that it is nutrients and we are recycling those nutrients back to the field. It’s a stinky job, but it needs to get done.”
The smell dissipated as a cold front moved in and pushed the air out, and according to the MPCA, that cold-front will likely remain here through Thanksgiving.
“It’s one of those things where once the fertilizer is down for a while, it won’t smell as much as time goes on,” Taraldsen said.
Glad they had a white coated scientist explaining what any farmer there could have told us.
Minniesota? Isn’t that where they elected the goofy wrestler governor????
Same here. Grew up on a dairy farm in an area with multiple farms around us. Things were quite fragrant during manure spreading time. Even worse, though, was the vegetable farm a couple miles away that would spread chicken manure every spring. Cow manure was nothing compared to that.
Directions of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s district in Minnesota.
Go West.
Turn North when you smell it.
Stop when you step in it.
They elected Ilhan Omanr and Al Franken. It doesn't get much shittier than that.
"Here’s What Caused the Manure Smell Across Minnesota This Week"
I figured Joe Biden gave a speech there
Or maybe Barack Hussein Obama did
Reading the headline ONLY (my bad), I presumed that Prime Mistake Justin(e) Castreau of Canaduh (diversity, doncha know) had visited Minnesota on the way back from the APEC meeting. Of course, with the state of RCAF equipment, it could well have been an emergency landing!
Of course with Castreau hiding from Xi Jinping, he could well have ordered the flight before the jet was fully prepped.
LET’S GO TRUE-DOLT!
MN is full of shit?
Maybe you’d take solace in the fact that rural MN is pretty red. You’d know that if you looked at the last two election maps.
Now, if you want to refer to MSP as full of shit, you’d have a point. But don’t take a dump on the people in out-state MN who vote pretty much the way you do.... and are the ones doing the manure spreading.
I don’t know what the Minnesotans are complaining about, San Franciscans pay over a million dollars for an ancient row house to be surrounded with fecal fragrance year round.
Given the shortages and prices of fertilizer earlier this year, everyone should be thankful for the smell.
One should also be thankful because it means cows and hogs are being raised. Unless you are John Kerry.
West metro here in a reliably red county. You are correct. MSP is to blame for our horrific politicians.
Right after harvest the shitwagons come out....
The dairy farmers up here call cow shit liquid gold..
The shitwagons pay the farmers to pump their shit. The shitwagons then charge the farmers to spread it on their fields.
The only stink worse than cow shit is pig shit.
Exactly! This!
As I learned in College back in the 70’s, organics added to the soil don’t add much as fertilizer but they DO improve the structure of the soil for the next season.
It also takes about 6 months for the nitrates to decompose into something the plants can use.
As the farmers say: That is the smell of money.
My first thought was, the House and Senate are on holiday break, so they went home.
Imagine Klobuchar, Smith, Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig & Dean Phillips all in the same bus.
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