“You mean there’s more!”

“The best part is yet to come.”

“Which is?”

“Now we’ve got to clean out the Kuhstall—as I said before, make the ladies’ beds for this evening.”

“Is it scary?” asked Thaddeus.

“Not a bit—only a little messy.”

Reentering the vacated barn, Thaddeus noted that it suddenly seemed very quiet with the occupants no longer at home. Heinrich grabbed two pitchforks leaning against the wall and tossed one of them to his guest with a smile. He then walked to the far end and scooped up a large forkful of wet, brown manure mixed with straw and hoisted it with some effort onto the wide flat handcart standing in readiness for just this purpose.

With an unceremonious splat, it fell onto the cart, spraying tiny missiles of manure in all directions, including one moist projectile onto Thaddeus’s shirt as he stood by observing the process.

“Ugh!” he cried, leaping back.

“Excuse me!” laughed the baron. “Hazards of the trade. But now it’s your turn. You have to take up that pitchfork like a man! I want to see what kind of stuff you Americans are made of!”

Another splat from the baron’s fork landed squarely on top of the first, and he sent wet prongs eagerly after a third.

With even more timidity than he had shown with the cows, Thaddeus dug his fork into the brown, gooey mess at his feet, looking more like a child fiddling with some detestable portion of vegetables on his plate than he did a farmhand. At length a small forkful of the recycled grass from Heinrich’s field landed softly on the cart.

“Good!” exclaimed the baron triumphantly. “You’ll get used to it, just like herding the cows. You’ll soon be enjoying it!”

“Enjoying it!”

“Smell and all… I guarantee it. You’ll get back to Berlin, and within a week you will be longing for my barn and its ladies. This is the ultimate in touching the true meaning of nature, as you were speaking of earlier. It’s the organic completion of the rounds of life—from grass to the cow, to make milk and manure. The milk feeds children and makes cheese for me to enjoy. The manure we pile up outside until time to load it onto a wagon and spread it on the bare fields after harvest. Then it will nourish next year’s grain to make bread to feed the children’s parents and to eat with the cheese. It’s wonderful! We’re standing in the middle of the complete cycle of the growing process.”

“If you say so,” said Thaddeus, looking down at his boots buried in the ugly mire. He reached down and gathered up another load, a little larger this time, and emptied it onto the cart.