When we lived in Chicago, my wife and I would spend hours in the Fern Room at the Garfield Park Conservatory during the depths of winter as a cheap way to get some heat and humidity. Now we live in the PNW, where we have ferns everywhere, and I don’t look at them the same way anymore. After two days of pruning and a number of piles of refuse, we have finally removed the old leaves on about, oh, a quarter of the ferns in the main part of the yard – a shitload of work. We also cleared some hold outs from this winter’s English Ivy removal party with my dad. The yard looks much better.

The Shitload first became common usage during World War II. Farmers, who’s sheds were previously full of shit were called upon to empty their shit-filled barns in order to allow for the making of weapons.

A Shitload refers to between 1 and 4 tons of equine or bovine excrement (that’s horse and cowshit to you and me). More specifically Shitload describe the overfullness of the trailers used by farmers. I’ve got a shitload of hay in my barn. by Graham Nigel Goddard-Hill The West Country Jul 15, 2005