The crew came home this weekend. No more Momma doing the chores. It was a little soggy, but in the 40s most of the weekend. Yeah, I have to do the chores and it’s in the 20s and teens…the munchkins come home to take over again and it in the 40s. Go figure. {smile}

So we cleaned out the chicken house and the duck pen.

We took an extra few minutes to scrape all the webs and wasp nests out while everything is dormant. Wasps are a constant battle–we found at least 3 tiny starter nests just since 3 months ago!

We tend to use a deep bedding system for most of the farm–particularly in the winter. That means that we go in regularly and clean up the top-most layer of manure, then throw another layer of fresh bedding on. We only strip out the house all the way to the bottom a few times a year. If you keep the correct ratio of fresh bedding, this system serves several positive purposes. (There’s a great summary of this method in Carol Ekarius’ book Small Scale Livestock Farming. If you think you want to homestead with anything more than chickens, I can’t recommend this book highly enough!)

It can be messy. {smile} Especially with little helpers! The question becomes what is worse–having muck in your boot, or taking it off and maybe stepping in something while you’re hopping around!

First, as the layers grow they insulate the animals from the cold winter ground.

Second, the animal waste within the layers actually encourage good bacteria growth that help fight off bad pathogens.

Third, as the layers on the bottom begin to compost they actually generate heat (just like any good compost pile!) for the animals to rest on.

And Fourth, the layering system creates better, more well-balanced compost–which preserves usage of the animal waste as valuable nutrients and enriches soil across the whole farm.

Joel Salatin has a pretty detailed break down of the value of this system in his book Salad Bar Beef. We do a less intense version of his “bedding pack” method in each of our shelters.

For jobs this size, we use the lawn mower hooked to our small, four-wheeled wagon and just manpower. When we do our red barn (usually twice a year), we use the tractor.

But this deep bedding system doesn’t mean you never clean up!

We clean up and add bedding all winter long. It gets matted down from the animals laying on it, or from muddy feet in wet weather, or it starts to get smelly if the animals are confined too long by bad weather. Any smell other than wet wool or feathers  (meaning if you smell manure) is usually a sign of a break down in your ratio of animal waste to fresh bedding.

The crew enjoyed riding back and forth in the wagon–it kept their mood up while they had to be raking, scooping, and shoveling! {smile}

And in the case of the chicken house, they had been holed up in there for several days because of the cold weather, so it was particularly icky in there. If you get too much of it at one time, chicken…mess…tends to get mixed with the bedding hay or straw and then packed down into a stinky “carpet” on the floor. Normally when they are outside roaming around you don’t get that critical mass of…mess…in the house. But a couple of days of confinement can get ugly! So we were out there peeling up that top “carpet” of mess and hauling it to the compost pile.

Then we stuffed the house with more fresh, sweet, grass-smelling hay. Some of the hens were so excited they kept hopping inside in the middle of things just to check out our progress!

The cow shed was a little easier. Just rake out the piles and spread out some clean straw.

Then we moved on to the duck pen. We moved the pen to fresh grass and checked their house for bedding. They were still stuffed full and clean, so that job was done. We went ahead and hauled a couple of bales of straw out to the cows’ shed too.

Umm…there’s a goof-ball among us.

Then we fixed the legs on the sheep feed trough–those pushy, pregnant ewes will knock it over in a heartbeat if we don’t keep the stabilizing leg-bases secured!–and scrubbed water buckets and feed pans. We topped off everyone’s’ water, picked up trash, and collected baling twine and buckets that were lying around. {smile}

Then (deep breath) we let the kiddos have some play time.

The kiddos think the flag is just for fun–but Mr. Fix-It put it on there so we can see them no matter where they are–since they’re allowed to “off-road” around the big fields now. {smile}

Work hard, play hard…that’s our motto for motivation around here.

Now we’re moving on with painting the kitchen and getting some more wooded clean up done. We’re putting together a pretty big pile of scrap metal to haul for recycling. Oh yeah, and we’ve got Speedracer’s 6th birthday coming up! We did a Nature Birthday Party and a Cowboy Birthday Party…one more and we’ll call it a year! {smile}

Did you get your new year off with a busy weekend?

See where I’m sharing…