A couple of days ago I was google earthing farms in my area, not really much to get excited about , however a couple of farms in the Neath area attracted my attention, they had some interesting features close to them so I gave one of the farmers a ring. I spoke to a very nice lady on the phone, she said it would be fine with her for me to detect, but for me to double check with her husband first. I phoned back the next day , introduced myself and the farmer was most accomidating. Really decent guy to speak to, he said there'd been some interesting finds found by workers on the farm and I could have the run of the farm no problems... brilliant. He then asked me a favour. He asked if I would look for his Wedding ring that he had lost some 5 months back, I said no problem ...I was only to fglad to help. He then went on to explain where he thought it may be..... Underneath 2 tons of chicken manure..
. Ermmmmm......
Today I went over the farm , cold cloudy day but fine , so after buying a new pair of anti chicken poop wellington boots I made my way to Neath.
Got to the farm and was greeted by the lady i spoke to on the phone. She showed me around, told me which fields were they'rs and introduced me to the pile of chicken excrement. Wow that was a load of shit .
She left me to it and i made a few quick sweeps of the outside yard. Impossible to detect it was ful of fragments my detector was going haywire, so i made my way to the poop pile......slowly got within 10 ft of it and picked up a signal, quite shallow, dug it, Cartwheel penny, another couple of yards and a belt buckle. Then the chicken poop, It was a good 3 foot deep. I raked and raked to try and flatten bits of it ..god the stench was awful , I will never moan about changing the babies nappy again! I scanned what i could but it was impossible, the pile was surrounded by zincs and again it was too much interference. After an hour of gut wrenching , retina burning nasal hair scorching fumes I decided to have a break and do some detecting where the air didnt hurt my eyes.
I detected in the pasture around the farmhouse for a couple of hours. brought up a couple of thrupennys a couple of 1907 pennys a 1694 halfpenny or penny? a pendant with a biblical verse on it, and the normal buckles and buttons. Followed by two dogs and a nutty black sheep I worked my way back to the farmhouse and was greeted by the farmer that had lost his wedding ring.He pointed out the areas he'd been on the day his ring was lost he also said it would be fine for me to check the chicken runs as there'd once been a really old farm building on there.
Now I've never been surrounded by that many chickens before, and they all wanted to "help", every hole I dug they were in there pecking my wellys pecking my detector...give in!...lol.
A bit earlier the farmer had showed me where he had taken manure over to a herb garden so I searched the garden but nothing. There was a small pasture... garden size around the herb garden, half heartedly I decided to check this garden, by now my back was killing and I was cold I'd had enough! I searched up one side of the garden, turned around andstopped straightened by back and turned, as I turned my detector gave the sweetest signal I'd had all day. Iooked down and there nestled amongst the grass was the guys wedidng ring!!!!!!!! I... could...not...belive...it. What a result. To say the couple was over the moon was an understatment the look of relief in their faces was self evident. They offered me a reward which I declined, they were good enough to allow me to search their land , I said that was reward in itself. But I did accept some lovely fresh chicken eggs!! I've now got permission to detect, whenever I want and the farmer is going to show me around the other farms in the area that I can detect on.