baymule
Sustainability Master
Happy New Year! 2019 was a flat out, pure-dee garden bust. Drought, heat, failure. Ring out the old, bring in the New Year! Go 2020!!
It has begun!
We spent the last couple of days cleaning out the sheep barn. I practice deep litter, bedding with pine shavings, pine straw, leaves and hay. We clean it out once or twice a year. There is no smell, the barn is open on 3 sides, plenty of air flow.
First we raked up all the loose hay on top, got two mule loads, piled high and spread it in the newly cleared ground in the horse pasture. DH used the tractor to push the wood mulch into a couple of swales. I used a garden rake and we picked the larger pieces. The swales will help keep the rain water from running off and let it soak in.
It has begun!
We spent the last couple of days cleaning out the sheep barn. I practice deep litter, bedding with pine shavings, pine straw, leaves and hay. We clean it out once or twice a year. There is no smell, the barn is open on 3 sides, plenty of air flow.
First we raked up all the loose hay on top, got two mule loads, piled high and spread it in the newly cleared ground in the horse pasture. DH used the tractor to push the wood mulch into a couple of swales. I used a garden rake and we picked the larger pieces. The swales will help keep the rain water from running off and let it soak in.
Then we raked up the used Sheep hay.
We spread the hay over the bare dirt to add humus to the soil, trap rain and provide shade to the grass roots when we plant grass seed in early spring.
Easy part was over, we went back to the Sheep barn and dug in. The first part was not under the barn, open to rain, it was HARD packed, damp and heavy. We scraped up a mule load, parked the mule in the garden and quit for the day.
Next day we shoveled the manure out on the garden and went back for more. We dug out 6 more mule loads of manure. I could see the layers of decomposed pine shavings, leaves, hay, pine straw and more hay.
The top layers were dry, loose, no smell and was kept turned by chickens. The lower layers were hard packed, had to be pried up by lots of muscle screaming hard work and no stinky smell, just a compost, earthy smell.
We shoveled it out in the garden.
The top layers were dry, loose, no smell and was kept turned by chickens. The lower layers were hard packed, had to be pried up by lots of muscle screaming hard work and no stinky smell, just a compost, earthy smell.
We shoveled it out in the garden.
The 32’ tomato double row trellis.
The short 16’ tomato double row trellis.
A section of the garden. The load still on the mule will almost cover the rest of this part. We will finish digging out the main part of the barn today. At the end of day 2 of the Great Barn Clean Out, we were exhausted! After showers, we were practically comatose. LOL
We took the day off yesterday. It is sunny, high of 70F degrees today. Back in the garden today!
That's a huge amount of shoveling work. Congrats! Your weekly exercise needs appear to have been met. 
