You could get a load of wood chips delivered from a tree trimming services and mix the manure with the wood chips. If you left these in a pile in the corner of your garden, you could then use the enriched wood chips to heavily mulch the the middles of your rows when you plant. Once your crops are growing, you could pull some of the mulch from the row middles up closer to your plants to prevent weeds, conserve moisture, and give your plants a side dress of fertilizer. The two posts above are correct about being careful using fresh manure to avoid contamination of food crops. It is less of a problem if you know where the manure comes from. I don't mean the obvious source of the manure, but under what conditions the animals were raised and what they were fed. Manure from large scale factory farms (like the egg farms recently in the news), are much more likely to contain harmful pathogens because of the bizarre feeds given to them. While home poultry keepers feed their animals primarily grains and vegetable matter, factory farm chicken and egg producers routinely feed the chicken the remains of diseased cattle that are deemed unfit for human consumption. The manure from these chicken is then fed to the cattle, whose remains are then fed to the chickens again. This pathogen "merry-go-round" produces the contaminated meat and poultry sold to consumers. The meat and eggs produced from these systems are bad enough, but I can't imagine the pathogens in the feces of these animals. You friend is more likely feeding grain, hay, and grass to his donkeys, while his birds eat corn, oats, soy meal, bugs, and maybe a lizard if they can catch it. Unlike commercial producers, he probably is not feeding his peafowl manure to his donkey, donkey manure to his chickens, and sick chickens to his emu. Leaving the manure on your garden for 5 months would be safe. Composting the manure for 3 months will give plenty of time for the beneficial mesophiles and thermophiles in the compost to dispose of any pathogens.

Jay's right....just stay away from TT. I bought 3 trees from them in the past and only ONE has survived, my caimito which has barely put on any growth at all. I wish I would have stayed away from them. Plantogram is awesome. I also found the best way to get in touch with them is to just call. Mickey recieves a lot of emails and it takes him a lot of time to respond. I bought 1 mango from him and it has done nicely for me. Andrew

I had a Cavaliere hood before but end up taking it down because the city inspector said there weren't any safety approval for the unit. It definitely cost me a lot of money buying the unit, having someone put it up for me and then take it back down. No worth the trouble. I did end up buying a Windster unit. I believe their phone number is 626 350 1015. Definitely recommended for someone who cook a lot and like the style. It is also not too expensive. Link below. www.windsterhood.com

I have a couple of cookie scoops, but I still prefer the push-off-the-teaspoon-with-my-finger method, LOL. Plus it gives the grandkids a chance to eat too much cookie dough, all filled with raw eggs, before it gets baked, because their job is to roll the cookies into balls before baking. OK, seriously, the cookie scoops are great, I have the stainless steel "ice cream scoop" type and I've had no personal experience with the silicone one you describe, but my secretary has one and loves it. Go figure, I guess it's one of those personal preference things and I sure don't need another gadget to stuff into my kitchen drawers so I probably won't try one either. But it definitely is a cookie scoop. Annie