No. 2

I’ve had to chip ice out of the water buckets the past two mornings as it’s been in the lower 20’s overnight.  Can’t say I look forward to the rest of winter. Only good thing about it is that the chiggers & ticks are gone.  

Even though the ground was still a smidge smooshy, I went to rake out the area around the goat manger.  It’s probably been close to four months since I’ve cleaned up the hay around there & it definitely needed a good mucking-out.  As anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of owning a goat, you can attest to the fact that they are notorious wasters of hay.  I pitched out an unbelievable amount of trampled hay from the area around the manger.  It drives me to cursing every time I clean up after them.  I can’t imagine how many bales of perfectly good hay gets tossed & trampled around by those nit-picky buggers.  I even made the slats in the manger closer together this year so they can’t get their heads inside of it thinking that it would reduce the amount of spoiled hay.  Ha.

I’m hoping that once we get Ms. Melman & the mini-horse (still haven’t picked a name for him yet) in with them that they will pick through what the pompous-diva-goats don’t want.  Until then, I will continue my cursing about the discarded goat fodder and continue telling myself, “What wonderful compost this will make.”

Speaking of compost, Paul made me a different composting bin out of some wood pallets we acquired from a friend.  The one I originally made was made out of cattle panels & some boards, but it didn’t have a front so the chickens were constantly “aerating” it for me.  In other words, making a total mess out of it.  The chickens won’t be able to scratch around in this one, though I have found a few of them have made it up to the top.  But at least the stuff will stay inside the bin. 

One side is already filled and I’m not even half way finished with mucking out the goat area.  Even though it’s winter, it should have a good start as there is plenty of goat / chicken poop stomped in with the hay.  I think we’re going to have to make an additional larger pile somewhere farther out – away from the chickens.  There is so much stuff that can be composted around here if we just set up an area for it to cook.  We haven’t even started raking the leaves and during the summer months I’d like to start bagging up the grass from the mower & put that in the compost heap.  I’m also going to call a few of the local lawn care & tree service companies in town to see if they want to dump their yard waste at our place.  I called the local stables last year to see what they did with their used stall shavings / manure and they told me they charge by the pickup load.  Charge???  I don’t think so.  If it were free I’d probably go pick some up once in a while, but the heak if I was going to pay THEM for me to haul off their poop.  Goodness knows we’ve got enough poop around here (although any avid composter will tell you that there is never enough poop).  How many times can I type the word “poop” in one paragraph? 

Poop.