The weekend was beautiful here–sunny and 75. Perfect for getting out and getting to work in the farmyard! The kiddos won their soccer and football games and then we spent the weekend spring cleaning the farm yeard. All kinds of scrubbing and scooping and stacking and shoveling. What kind of spring cleaning does a farm need?

Here are some things we worked on…

We moved the sheep and cows onto the big pasture the other day, so now we’re busy cleaning out the winter pastures and feed shed.

• The Ladybug, Speedracer and I walked around to every field and gathered up all the buckets, feed pans, and mineral tubs and scrubbed them out and let the sunshine dry them up.
• We emptied and scrubbed every water-er and trough. W
• We gathered up every temporary post that was used to temporarily hold something in place {smile} and stacked them all back in the barn.

• Then we filled every water-er to the top with sparkling clean, fresh water.
• We filled the mineral feeder to the top with salt/mineral mix.
• And we filled the chicken house feeder and waterer.

 

We took all our sorting pens and chutes down for some much-needed maintenance, including washing, scouring off rust, and repainting, along with some judicious WD-40 applications!

Meanwhile, Mr. Fix-It and the Cowboy were busy using the tractor to clean out the barns and sheds. (Read more about our farm composting piles…)

There are two basic kinds of “piles” to be cleaned up here.

One is under shelters and in the barns and sheds where the animals stay in bad weather. That is the bedding piles–made up of layer after layer of animal waste, then straw, then waste, then straw. I’ve written before about using a deep bedding method in the chicken house. We use it for all our winter housing. Then, in the spring, Mr. Fix-It gets out there, scrapes it all out, and moves it into our compost piles at the back of the field.

Usually, it’s about half composted already!

Then there are the hay-feed piles. (See above picture.)

We feed big round bales in the winter. As the animals gather around, pulling hay out of the bale, it creates a ring around the bale of wasted hay and then animal waste on top of it. Using a bale feeder reduces the wasted hay, but you still get that “ring” of animal waste from everyone gathering around the bale to eat all. day. long. And it’s hard on the ground because the animals are standing around in that one spot all. day. long.

So you can either move the feeder constantly to spread the impact around, or you can keep feeding in the same spot. It increases the impact on that one area but reduces the impact on the field overall. It also create’s it’s own “deep bedding” effect as well. We feed in one or two spots all winter and then come through in the spring and scrape the piles away and move the half-composted waste to the compost piles.

By doing it this way, once the animals are “up” on the bedding pack, the ground is more insulated from them standing around all day and they are up, out of the mud. It also turns out that the heavy impact really pounds loose hay seeds into the ground. Once we scrape in the spring, those areas tend to be self-seeded and come back strong in the grass!

Sunday after church we were back out there.

• We got our brooder set up for new chicks this week.
• We got broccoli, onions, cabbage and Brussel sprouts planted in the garden (and saw that our strawberries and raspberries are coming back!).
• And we got the chicken house moved to a new spot–which may or may not keep them out of my flower beds!

And the kiddos still managed to fit in time to “just play.” {smile}

I’ve started drafting some summer learning plans for this year. I know we’re going to do some more on Vikings this year, but I also just got Inkheart from our local library to preview. Have you read it? What did you think? My Ladybug enjoys fantasy and this one keeps popping up as a recommendation based on the Jessica Day George books she loves.

Did you get to enjoy nice weather outside this weekend?