A herd of dairy farmers were having dinner one evening when someone wondered aloud if there wasn’t something that they could do with all of the bovine excrement.
In jest, someone else asked, “Can’t you guys make a flowerpot or something with the stuff?”
Those were fateful words for brothers Ben and Matthew Freund, second-generation dairy farmers who at the time maintained a herd of 225 Holsteins in East Canaan.
Each cow produces 120 pounds of manure daily. Why not grow flowers and tomatoes from cow flops?
Eight years and $72,000 in federal grants later, they developed a manure-based CowPots. The pots are biodegradable seed-starting containers that are sold to commercial and backyard growers who prefer their advantages over plastic pots.
Below is a video from Dirty Jobs, when host Mike Rowe visited the brothers’ farm.