When I was a kid I remember eating potatoes out of my grandmothers garden. Rub the dirt off on my shirt and eat. She also went to the local dairy to get manure to put on the garden every year.
Oh boy...my old man did that too. Except me and my siblings were the ones who were 'volunteered' to do the shoveling.
My father would bury plastic buckets in the ground near the garden, make a cow manure slurry, fill the buckets and cover them. He would ladle that vile mixture onto the soil around the plants for fertilizer.
Each Summer, his garden yielded over 1500 very large tomatoes. They were heaven. Well worth putting up with the shoveling and the smell.