Fifty Five Thousand Pounds of Manure

That’s the amount of horse and goat manure I figured I have left to move.

Wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow full.

A whole years worth.

I calculated its weight in pounds by adding up the hay we feed the animals each week, which is somewhere in the thousand pound range and timesing it by 52 weeks in the year, and adding a little for good measure.

I did not, however, add in the weight of the 20 inches of rain we’ve got this spring,  nor the additional weight of grass, grain and whatnots they find in the field to eat.

Nor did I add in the weight of maggots, flies, dung beetles and earthworms which have all made their home in the inches-deep manure bed.

Fifty five thousand pounds is about all my mind can fathom.  And it has a hard time doing that.

My most recent plan was to use my lawn mower and the garden cart I finally got wheels for, to move the manure from the pasture to the garden, but the lawn mower, with the garden cart attached is now stuck in the garden, possibly forever.  It was no match for the 6 inches of hay I had already put down when I drove it up in the garden with a 500 pound load of wet manure in the cart.

The worst thing is, I’m having to lay down the manure and hay over top of grass that’s four feet high.  If I had followed the instructions I found online for building a layered, no-till garden,   and layered the whole garden at one time last fall or even early this  spring, I’d have no weeds whatsoever.

I found that out when trying to decide where to put some tomatoes and I pulled back some thick layers of hay and saw nothing but rich brown dirt underneath with gobs of earthworms and a few leggy mushrooms.

Whatever.

So, even though I got my garden cart wheels fixed, I found that it stays stuck more often than unstuck when driving around in thick layers of wet hay and manure, and my old wheelbarrow wheels don’t like to hold air….and my new plastic manure fork, which I just bought, is no match for the heavy stuff I’m moving, so I’ve had to go back to the metal fork I’ve had all along….not having the plastic fork or good tires was the whole reason I didn’t get the manure moved when it was a more manageable amount….like only 20,000 pounds or so.

So, I’ve learned my lesson.  Maybe I need smaller horses that eat less?  Or maybe plastic horses that stay where you put them and whose plastic bale of hay lasts forever and never  creates anything wet and messy that needs moving.

Growing Onions in Hay

I’m a wanna-be gardener.  Never really good at it, and I lack essential tools of that trade, like a garden tiller and such.

But, wanting to get into growing more of our own food, I came upon a cool idea whereby you layer paper and then mulches such as old hay, manure, compost, etc.  We’ve probably got more manure, old hay, paper feed bags, old boxes, etc. than anybody needs, so this type of gardening sounded just perfect for me.  Best of all, by layering, you do not need to till.

I started the layering a couple months ago and I will say that when I pulled the mulch and paper back, it was a wonderful planting medium underneath.  A couple weeks ago I decided to set my onions right in the hay and not go down to soil level.  The hay was old and wet and partially broken down.  I checked on the onions and they have all started popping up through the hay!  I did plant them a little close, but they should be far enough apart to grow a decent size onion.

When I planted the tomatoes I decided to go down to soil level and set the plants in the dirt.  Once that was done, and it only required digging back a  small amount of soft dirt, I then mounded wet and then dry hay around the plants, right up to the leaves.  They seem to be doing very well.

If I get out to the store today I will get a new manure fork.  The handle broke off my old one, and although I have two extra handles for it, no amount of W-D40 has been able to loosen that screw that needs to come out so I can put the handle in.  So…I’m buying a new one and have tons and tons of rotted manure that can go in the garden.  Some of it is in a pile, mixed with hay and is growing grass over top of it!

And my manure tea is still sitting in a bucket waiting to be sprayed…kinda scared of that big stinky bucket though.  I have to strain the stuff before I can put it in the sprayer…sounds like a disgusting job!  I’m not sqeamish at all, but some things are too much even for me.

Happy Gardening.

It’s Time To Garden

Well, for lots of people, gardening started much earlier, but for me, I’ve been busy working on the pasture grass and hadn’t done much work in the garden.

Hadn’t done much work on the blog either.  And the grass is four feet high.

Almost.

But, as for the garden.  I have been spreading paper feed bags and thick layers of hay and mulch over my garden spot.  Today was the day to move back some of that wet hay and put some plants in.

I planted jewel weed, milkweed, strawberries, onions, and some berry bushes.  I had bought some potted lavender, but forgot to water it and it looks pretty dead so probably won’t plant it.  Well, I guess if I buried it, that would be appropriate.  I’ll just call it burying the dead, instead of planting.

Anyway, I didn’t till anything, and have some space left over, plus endless piles of old hay and manure.

I made a bucket of manure tea too.  I made it with fresh manure because I couldn’t remember if I should use fresh or old and fresh sounded better.  Then I read online that I should have used old manure or compost.  So now I have a bucket of yuk sitting in the back yard waiting for me to do something with it.  I don’t think I have the stomach for it right now.

I also bought a new sprayer.  I decided I wanted to try using raw milk for fertilizer.  I sprayed one whole pasture with it about 5 days ago.  It hasn’t stopped growing yet, but I don’t know if it has increased it’s rate of growth.

Again, I didn’t look up the instructions before doing it.  Just remembered reading about it and wanting to try it last season.

We had a new little baby goat girl born the day before Easter.  She’s just a doll.  I named her Cherry Blossom.

Aside from growing things and trying to stop things from growing, (the yard grass), summer is sneaking up and attacking very quickly.  It’s been in the 80’s and very warm at night.  I love it, love it, even the humidity.  The only thing I don’t like about summer are the bugs.  And we have a lot of them.  I set off 5 foggers in the house the other day to get rid of the stink bugs that had overwintered in the wall cracks and had started coming out by the dozens.  Don’t know if I killed them all, but I haven’t seen a live once since.  Except for two of them.  Hopefully, we’ll see no more.

Okay, the grass is screaming at me to come and cut it, so I guess I must.  One less thing to have to do tomorrow.

Toodles.