As unpleasant a job as
it might have been, there was no job more important to
the farmer than fertilizing his fields. Luckily, the
livestock on a mixed
farm were always glad to supply him
with plenty of raw material. Robins aside, there was no
surer sign of spring on the Island than the aromatic
scent of manure in the air. Because of its nutrient-rich
contents and its availability on the farm, manure was the
most widely 
used form
of fertilizer.
However, the leavings of the sea were also used to ready local fields for planting. Seaweed or kelp was gathered by farmers at the shore and spread over the soil to promote composting. Whenever possible, herring would be placed on potato fields, as the fish were said to bring about a scab-free crop. While lobster shells were used on some fields, due to the lime deposits they contained, they were also high in potash and could prove especially detrimental to potato cultivation. Also, when grain was sown in fields where lobster shells had been used, it would fall over.
The most important sea product used on the land was known as 'mussel mud,' a residue dragged up from the underwater beds where these blue molluscs grow and live. Made up of a rich decomposing mixture of oyster shells, mussels, and organic elements, mussel mud was practically the only source of lime at the farmer's disposal and greatly added to the richness of his soil. During the winter months, farmers would come from many miles around to harvest mud from the rivers and streams on the Island's North Shore.
Island mussel mud
digging began in the community of Clinton, located five
miles northeast of Kensington, in the early 1890s. At
first, mussel mud harvesting took place in the spring and
was done almost completely manually, by shoveling the mud
directly into carts and then hauling it off to the fields
by horse. But farmers soon discovered the harvest went
far better in the winter months, when the ice actually
allowed them to get directly over the richest mussel
beds. First, they would cut a huge cake of ice from the
river and then dig the mud with large forks, whose
handles alone sometimes measured up to thirty feet long.
These forks were attached by cable to a horse-driven
capstan-- a spool-shaped cylinder-- that pulled the mud
to the surface of the ice, where it was then placed in
sleighs and dragged back to the farm. The digging and
spreading of mussel mud was a time-consuming and
difficult undertaking, and it was eventually abandoned
when limestone became more accessible.
Age-old techniques, such as manure and mussel mud, were quickly replaced by chemical fertilizers in the second half of the twentieth century. After World War II, the government and chemical companies promoted new discoveries in farm chemicals and promised better alternatives to traditional fertilization. But more recently, with mounting concern over the long-term effects of these chemicals on us and the land, organic farming has been on the rebound. And mussel mud is now available again, though now sold in five pound bags instead by the sleighful.
