The manure brewed under the snow all winter, its occasional smell reminding us that we would have to deal with it in the coming spring when the ground thawed and dried out. By April the air was warm and the land ready for us to work in the manure. Hooking a cultivator to the farm tractor, I spread the decomposed pile and turned it under until it was thoroughly mixed into the nonfertile earth beneath. Where there was once just dirt, the beginnings of soil now lay. It would one day nourish a garden