DES MOINES, Iowa — Imagine this: While thousands and thousands of Iowans bustle through the aisle inside the Swine Barn at the Iowa State Fair, there's manure all over the ground.
Enter: Clinton Wallace and his maintenance crew of more than 80 people.
Wallace's crew are the people in charge of scooping all the manure and keeping all the animal pens clean and sanitized.
Their work begins when they come in and scoop all the bedding out of each pen. Once the cleanup crew has a few rows done, others come in with brooms to sweep the pens as clean as possible. While that happens, operators push all the bedding out of the barn and into huge piles outside.
Then early in the morning, trucks come to load up all the used bedding — full with manure — and transports it to be composted.
Wallace said they are in charge of the the cattle barn, stalling barn, sheep barn, swine barn and horse barn.
Which equates to a whole ton of manure.
"Somewhere in the neighborhood of 290 tons," Wallace said. "If I'm allowed to say it. There's a word for that right? 'Crapton.'"
With all that manure, don't you think it'd smell inside? Well, Wallace doesn't really think so, but that's also because he grew up on a farm surrounded by farm animals.
"You get used to it, you get used to the smell," he laughed. "I know that may be hard for some people to believe, but you truly do get used to the smell."
Fairgoers inside may not be used to the smell of manure, but they are used to seeing clean animal barns, thanks to Wallace's crew. However, most people don't see them, because they work after hours.
"A lot of times, our clean-outs are anytime from 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 'til one or two in the morning," Wallace explained.
So if you have the chance to see Wallace or his crew cleaning up any of the animals barns before the fair closes, make sure to thank them for keeping the barns clean.