She said the family farm was selected to be featured after the Freunds, who have been developing the Cow Pots for a decade, decided to apply for a segment on the program.
"Our son, Isaac, likes to watch the Discovery and History channels," said Mrs. Freund, and he saw a segment about a farm on 'Dirty Jobs.' He said, 'Oh, you know, we could do this. We have a dirty job'-he is always talking about how much he hates working here. So his sister, Amanda, went on the Internet and got an application form. You have to describe the job and the importance of why people should see it. They even do a background check."
After working through the television bureaucracy, the Freunds were selected for a 12-minute segment. A crew of six young men, including Mr. Rowe, showed up in mid-October to film the sequence, undoubtedly learning more than they ever wanted to know about cow manure.
"In this show, Mike Rowe takes on the role and does the different jobs. He's been in sewers-who fixes the pump at the bottom of a sewer pit? Someone has to. He's sexed chicks, bred horses, done pig farming ... . On our farm, Mike took a leaky rowboat out onto manure lagoon-he's out there singing in an operatic voice. You know, farmers have their look and all wear Carhartts. Imagine Mr. Hollywood wearing Carhartts ... ."
The college-trained Hollywood crew had much to learn about a farm. While shooting up a chute used to compact manure, they dropped their camera, borrowed from the History Channel, into the waste matter. "I bet it still smelled like a farm when they returned it," Mrs. Freund said.
For farmers, manure is both a blessing and a curse. Manure is used to fertilize fields, but because of the intensive farming done today, too much is produced to be absorbed by the land. Farmers must be careful not to pollute waterways with runoff from their fields, so more high-tech usages for the materials are sought.
For the Freunds, part of the answer has been to create a lagoon that holds the animal waste straight from the barn. The manure goes through a digester, where methane gas is captured and used to heat the Freunds' home and outbuildings. The liquid part is then carried across the road via an underground pipe and injected into the earth to fertilize the fields. This reduces runoff and smell for surrounding property owners.
The remaining solids are squeezed, composted and fashioned into seed pots that are then dried and packaged for use by nurseries and gardeners. After years of developing their secret "recipe," the Freunds have now cooked up a product that is being marketed intensively throughout the region. Altogether, 1,300 garden centers, including all the area Agways, have placed orders.
The Freunds are using a pot machine developed as a prototype for the project and that limits production to about 1,500 pots a day. "Matthew [her husband] is trying to create 50,000 pots," Mrs. Freund said. "He is only about two-thirds of his way through his [current] orders. He is worried about what it will be like after the show airs."
The Freunds have always had plans for a bigger operation for the pots. They have applied for and received several grants to bring the idea to its current level and are now applying for another grant to further the research. "That's the big challenge," Mrs. Freund said. "The next step is a million-dollar project. If we can prove to whoever makes the decision that we can go forward, there are a lot of people interested in the technology."
She sees the process as one that can be used in many places around the country. The Freunds would license the concept rather than building and operating plants. "We want to prove that the technology works so the process can be licensed," she said. "We could never make enough pots here. We are really trying to help dairy farmers deal with their excess manure."
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