Posted: Tuesday 24 May, 2011
Last October, we bought our two Shetland heifers. So that we could get them used to us and to a halter, we kept them in the little byre. It's the old cow shed, with stalls and neck chains still in place.
We covered much of the floor with stable mats and it was my intention to muck them out daily, like horses. Didn't happen. Partly time, partly because cow poo isn't like horse poo - it tends to be much softer, at least our girls' was.
Anyway, since we turned them out in March, the byre has been left unmucked out. Even if we had a tractor, the door is too narrow, so it's a graip and wheelbarrow job. So today, I started it. I'm planning to do an hour a day until it's finished. Or I'm finished. At the end of today's hour, I felt I could do more but decided to stop and not sicken myself or do my back in. I reckon at this rate, it will take me a month.
Boy, it's great stuff though. I'm stacking it in the vegetable garden, where it can rot down further, before going on the beds. It will add a lot of organic matter for sure. I wish we had smellivision though, then you could get the full impact.
I felt like a student again - we always got the mundane jobs; shovelling muck, grain, more muck; spraying nettles and docks; shovelling muck. Ah, it was a great life.
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risa b
Tuesday 24 May, 2011 at 5:22pm
Some folks are farming nettles now ... ;)