Relaxing in the Barnyard

Every evening the goats come up from pasture and settle in for the night.

Ava and Wanda

Stormy

Betty Lou

Athena and Cinnamon

Joani

It makes me happy to see them all lounging around and chewing their cuds.

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An Ode to the Wheelbarrow

Aging with aching back
dreading the looming task
I seek help for my work woes
and find a hero in the simple
wheelbarrow–

The task at hand never fun
but progress seen boosts
the spirits; especially now
with my job made easier by a
wheelbarrow–

Now that the garage and buck pen have been scooped out, I’m moving on to the greenhouse.  It’s been way too long.  I figured it up and between the construction mess, rain, dry, llama/cow battles, and not having a manure spreader, it’s been five years since my greenhouse and barn were scooped. [Edit:  I was wrong.  It’s been four years; it just looks like five because the stinking llamas keep making their poop piles in my buildings.] There is no way it can go another year (although, goats don’t make the mess cows do, and the composting actually helps keep them warm in winter).  I picked up the goat minerals from the outside pen and removed my hobbled barrier to keep the llamas out.

I still don’t have a manure spreader parked right outside the pen, so I have to haul it across the barnyard, past the lounging llamas.  Then I have to go in the front door of the barn and out the first side door.

Odie and Maybeline

Then it gets piled behind the Love Shack.  This fall, when the crops are out of the field, it will get spread on it.  If my nephew doesn’t get around to it, well, I’ll have plenty of compost for next year.

I worked hard all yesterday afternoon.  I made some good progress.  This one is going to be a several day job though, because I’m old.  Seriously.  I scoop for four hours and want to take the next day and a half to recover.  I am sadly running out of time, so I don’t get that luxury with this building.

I do have some expert help though.  Tony is trying to make sure I get some good experience steering a full wheelbarrow around large objects.  So helpful!

Tony Llama

The goats had to check things out when they came back up from pasture.

Haley with kids Orpheus and Calliope

Cutie doesn’t look too sure about this.

Cutie (and Aphrodite behind her)

I’ll be really happy to have this building done.  I’m hoping to have it done before the weekend, because our nice, cool working weather is coming to an end.  Then I’ll just have the biggest and messiest building left to scoop–the barn.

Working Weather

I decided to use this past week’s better weather to finally clean out my garage.    I am so tired of it being a livestock barn.

I had to kick the boys and Buster and Aurora out of the small paddock.  The bucks were not happy that they had to wait a couple of hours before they could lounge in the buck room.

Fionn and Xerxes

I am piling it in there to try and fill in the hole where we hauled dirt.  It will compost into nice dirt.

I divided it into a multiple day project (mostly because I switched to removing twine from the barn).  I can at least see how much progress I made that first day.

Buster was happy to be let back into the little paddock.  He was happy to get to his dust bowl (and I was nice enough to not get anything icky in it).

I’d hate to mess up their dust baths.

Buster

After we finished putting up hay, I managed to come back to this project.  I still have to take out my fence and do touch up scooping before I can really get it fully  back to my garage, but I’m making progress!

Then it’s on to the buck room.  I’ll add that to my compost pile too.  It should really start to fill that dip in nicely.

After that, I have the Love Shack, the Greenhouse, and the barn.  It keeps me busy!  I just hope the decent weather lasts.

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