A Faithful Friend & A Good Day's Work

Yesterday Herb took advantage of a dry day to drag harrow the Home Pasture . . .

and Kara's Pasture.  You can see where he had harrowed by the nicely combed grass in his wake.  I noticed Misty was keeping him company (a white spot behind the pines).

Kara's Pasture is quite large and took several hours.  It really needed harrowing, being the last pasture the livestock were in before moving into the barnyard for the winter.  Herb said that when he did the flat section (in the photo below), the manure was so thick it spread out behind him as if he was using the manure spreader!

No matter how long it took, faithful Misty (a little white dot at right) settled down to wait.  It was odd not to see Hero, Herb's usual "shadow," but Misty had obviously taken on the job in Hero's absence.

When Herb headed back to the barnyard for the manure spreader, Misty followed him there . . .

and back and settled down to wait again.

Right before feeding time it started to rain, just as Herb finished spreading manure, leaving the pastures ready for the rain to soak the manure into the ground.  Hero appeared from nowhere and raced past Misty.  Don't worry, Misty, you may not be as fast as Hero, but we know who was Daddy's faithful friend all day long!

I told Herb later that it looked like he'd had a harrowing day.  His reply?  "Oh, it was a drag!"  I'm glad his sense of humor was intact after such a long, busy day!

The Poop-ular Chicken

"Ah chickens.  Good for so much on the farm.  They make poop, they rearrange poop, they sort poop, they find bugs and worms in other animals' poops and then they taste FANTASTIC when eaten."


Quoted from Donna OShaughnessy (of South Pork Ranch--I LOVE that name!--in Illinois) in a comment on Sugar Mountain Farm's blog.  Thank you, Donna, for allowing me to quote your profound and witty comment!


Here's a photo tribute to our chickens doing their poop thing.  (Sorry, I didn't include photos of them making poop.  You'll just have to take Donna's and my word!)

Barnyard poop rearranged by the chickens

Gypsy, after eating bugs from other animals' poop, lays an egg with a lovely orangey yolk

Kiwi "sings" her happy chicken song as she goes about her poop management

Grace looks for bugs and seeds in the horses' poop

Grace sorts poop.  Don't ask me how she categorizes it, but she knows just when to look down and find a "goody."

Hero watches Grace find a "goody" in the sorted, rearranged poop

Beauty and deliciousness, thanks to the Poop Management Squad 

Apprentice Poop Management Squad at work in the chicken tractor on pasture fertilized with poop from horses, cattle and pigs

Quand Je Vois Mon Derrière . . .

Yesterday I spent an hour and a half drag harrowing the far end of the Lower Pasture.  When I was done it looked like this.  Half the grass lays in one direction and half in the other, depending on the direction I was driving.

This is our drag harrow.  Because it’s not quite as wide as the tractor, it means I have to make quite a few circles around each pasture, but that’s okay—it gives me plenty of time to think.  


(Uh-oh!)

This is the goal of drag harrowing: to break up piles of manure and spread them out a bit.  This way birds, insects, and weather will break the manure down faster.  That means a more even “application” of our natural fertilizer, a reduction in parasites, and it also makes regrowth grass more palatable to the animals.  Horses, especially, will not eat the lovely rich green clumps of grass that grow up around piles of manure.  Who can blame them?!

One of the enjoyable things about drag harrowing is watching the birds.  Swallows and other birds come swooping around me, catching bugs I've stirred up out of the grass.  Hopefully the crows will come along soon and scratch through the newly disturbed manure.  It's all good!

When I’m drag harrowing, I try to cover the whole field.  I can look at the “nap” of the grass and see where I’ve been.  See the lighter grass at the right of this photo?  That’s where I’ve been.  I just line my right tire along the edge of that and drive straight ahead.  On the left of the photo you can see the reddish-brown grass that is laying in the opposite direction; that’s where I came back.  The medium-colored grass in the middle is where I haven’t been yet.

And looking behind leads me to thinking . . .

Many years ago when we lived in Africa, a friend told us something he witnessed in a church in France.  A young American girl was studying French before going to Africa as a missionary.  At the end of her year of language study, her French church asked her to stand up and talk about her past life (in French, her “vie en arrière”).  They offered her a translator, but she felt confident of her French and declined.  Here, then, is what she said:

“Quand je vois mon derrière” (“When I look at my derriere”—and yes, it means the same thing in both languages!)

“Je vois que c’est divisé en deux parties.”  (“I see that it is divided in two parts”)

“L’une est noire et l’autre est blanche,” (“One is black and the other is white”)

“Et entre les deux il y a une grande abîme.”  (“And in between them there’s a great chasm.”)


Now you can see why I say it's dangerous when I get thinking!  Who knows where my mind will take me while I'm driving up and down the field?  It's bound to be somewhere harrowing!

Our ABI Classic Manure Spreader in Action

Today was a big day.  We used our new ABI 50 cu. ft. Classic Manure Spreader for the first time.  It was delivered back in March and sat on the remnants of its packing crate for awhile until Herb could get the cotter pin he needed to hitch it to the tractor.  Then he moved it into the barnyard.

For the last few weeks, we've been gradually been filling the manure spreader, catching up on picking up manure as we can.  The spreader is small and maneuverable enough that Herb just parked it in the barnyard.  The chickens love it; they spend all afternoon under its shade.

A lot of this manure has been scratched through by the chickens, but there are still dry lumps.  It's been rained on, too, so there are soggy lumps.  And lots of hay.  We're throwing everything at it at once!

The ABI salesman recommended the Classic for us because it can handle both horse and cow manure, whereas the smaller Elite is made to handle only horse manure.  Let's see what our Classic can do.

Here's the pasture that needs the most help.  This strip between me and the tractor is where we tend to get floods when the creek overflows.  (It's been a while since that happened!)  The floods wash rock and gravel across the ground and wash topsoil away.  It may not look too bad from here, but take a closer look . . .

Oh, yeah, it needs some help!

Two levers to pull down, the left-hand one determining how fast the manure will be spread.  Herb opened that one all the way this time to see what it would do.

Lights, camera . . .

Action!

This is so fascinating, I just had to keep taking pictures!

And a side view.  You can already see how the pile of manure has moved toward the back, thanks to the nice chain mechanism inside.

This is SUCH a satisfying sight!

I just had to get in for a close-up, which would explain the flecks of dry manure on my shirt afterwards.

The spreader is almost empty, and this is what the ground looks like behind it.

Here's a close-up.  Herb decided this was thicker than he needed it, so he decided to try Notch 2 instead of Notch 4 on the regulator (which should put out half as much).

The spreader was empty in the time it took Herb to drive a loop with the tractor, so he headed back up to the barnyard for a second load.  Oh, yeah, those horses are Manure Manufacturing Machines!

Conclusion:  We LOVE our ABI Classic Manure Spreader!  Herb was actually excited about going back up to the barnyard to shovel up more manure so he could use the spreader again!

Now if only we could train the horses to back up to it and dump it right in the spreader . . .

The Potato Condo

 About the middle of March, Herb started my potato condo and filled it with half Black Gold-half compost for me.

The potato condo is sitting on several layers of paper feed sacks that we watered down.  The pressure-treated 4x4 posts are covered with black plastic stapled on to keep them away from the soil.

About mid-April, I planted my seed potatoes in it.

I have come up with a modified--and I believe improved--design on the potato condos I've seen on the internet.

Stay tuned . . .

By today the potatoes had grown up nearly a foot tall.  (I forgot to take a picture of them standing alone.)  Herb got me a wheelbarrow full of compost, which I spread around and between the plants.

Nearly half of each plant has been covered with compost.

Next I added some old half-rotten hay that was laying around.  I tucked it in around each plant . . .

... making sure none of them were covered up and that each one had several inches of leaves showing.  Now it's time for Herb to do the next step on the condo.

Three Wonderful Things, Yea Four

In the vein of Proverbs 30:18-19, there are three things that amaze and delight me, yea four:

Sun shining through misty rain over green pastures,

Horses grazing in the rain outside my back door,

A man and his tractor hard at work in the rain,

And (please excuse the unbiblical-sounding language, but I'm paraphrasing Herb this time) good shit, hard at work!

You will learn several things from this (somewhat) biblical meditation:
1)  In this year when we are already almost 2" short on rainfall by mid-April, we're thankful for every drop!
2)  Julie is more or less integrated into the herd.
3)  Herb is putting composted manure around all his fruit trees, using the tractor to get it down there.
4)  Herb completely flabbergasted poor Shawn, who trims my horses' feet, when my normally rather quiet husband stopped his tractor by the barnyard to crow, "I'll tell you one thing we do well here--we sure make good shit!"
5)  We're pretty easy to please!  A little rain, a little you-know-what, and our animals nearby is all it takes to make us happy!

A Crappy Day--The Good Kind!

An exciting event we've been eagerly awaiting happened this morning while I was at physical therapy (of course).  Fortunately, Kara grabbed my iPad and recorded it for me.   Brandy asks, "Is THIS the new pony?"

Sorry, Brandy, no, but it IS something we got because of you (and Angel and Sara and Siobhan and T-Bone).  Hint:  Poop!

Our instructions from ABI said to have a tractor with a loader ready to help unload our new toy because it was too big for the lift gate alone to handle.  So Herb fastened a strap to it and helped the driver let it down.

Oops!  Suddenly it slipped!  But the tractor and the strap held it up.

Oof!  Safe on the ground!  You can actually see the relief on Herb's face!  (Our new toy weighs over 1,000 lbs, by the way.  You don't grab it when it slips!)

The mighty little Kubota dragged the whole thing out of the road so the driver could turn around at Kara's house.

This is the delightful sight that met my eyes when I got home:  Our new ABI Classic Manure Spreader!  Ours is the 50G, meaning it is ground-driven (the blades turn as it drives over the ground without having to be hooked up to a tractor's PTO drive) and it holds 50 cu.ft. of manure.  This is not a lot as full-size manure spreaders go, but it is perfect for us.  It would take us all winter to fill a gigantic manure spreader, and then our tractor wouldn't be able to pull it!  This one will be light enough to be pulled by our riding mower, will cause less damage to wet ground, and will be more maneuverable.

Take a peek inside at the chains that move the manure back . . .

... and the chopping blades and spreader bars that, well, chop and spread the manure!  :)  We can't wait to try it out, but we need a large cotter pin, so we'll just have to hold our horses . . . before the spreader can hold our horses' manure!

Stay tuned for a photographic demonstration . . .

You can see why this was a "crappy" day and why it was good, too.  One more thing happened that might qualify for a "crappy" day for lots of people, but made it extra specially good for us:  A cloudburst that dumped rain on us shortly after I took this picture.

What a lovely, doubly crappy day!