Drowning in Mud! Tricks for dealing with winter snow melt.....

[savingdogs]

Okay, I'm from California, right? It never rains there.

Mud is foreign to my nature.

Ways of dealing with this beyond spending tons of money hauling in yards and yards of gravel? I not only have mud in my animal pens, but my paths, my lawn, everywhere! I've been throwing out clover seeds and grass seed, flower seeds, etc, in areas of low traffic, but I cannot afford to lay miles of gravel paths here like I would like.

Over the summer, I need to work on making this a less slippery and less muddy place.

Suggestions?

 

[glenolam]

Ummmmm....get some waders.



Seriously, in the parts of our yard that turn to mud we just wait until they dry to do anything.

 

[Marianne]

Can you get free wood chips locally? The ones we can get from our little local recycle center aren't pretty like shredded bark, but they seem to hold up pretty good and they're free. We get a pickup load at a time and put down a 4" layer. 6" would be better, probably.

If you have free ranging hens, they'll rearrange it for you on a regular basis. :/

Oh! what about making your own concrete pavers? You can make a molds from scrap wood and do a few at a time, or make a cobblestone look. Even soilcrete (soil cement), agcrete (any agricultural waste ie straw, dry grass mixed in with the concrete), that type of thing might do the trick.

 

[savingdogs]

I was thinking about creating level paths and then using the mini-paver forms I have to make some concrete stepping stones. We did that once before and it was so much work we swore we never would again, but it would certainly be better to have some solid footing.

This week I have slipped and fallen in the mud four times!

 

[freemotion]

You can throw some old boards down in the worst areas to have something to walk on until it dries up.

Do NOT put any organic materials in muddy areas that are sandy in the summer. Like around the barn. Organic materials....shavings, etc.....break down and hold moisture...that is why we mulch our plants and add compost to our gardens, in part to hold moisture. It will only get muckier over the years.

Around the barn I scrape each layer of muck as it thaws, scraping even thin layers once or twice a day, every day that it is above freezing, and remove it until I finally reach the ground. I try to rake up all organic material from this area throughout the year...hay, shavings, poop, leaves, etc. Every few years you have to add more sandy dirt as you will scrape up some dirt, too. But it will dry out very fast in the spring in those areas. I did this for years when I managed a show horse farm in Northern Maine, and continued the practice on my own farmlet. Works great.

In my one area that I cannot get dry, I put a low "table" structure that I made from a large scrap of siding and some 2x10"s just outside the door of the communal goat stall. I also added some plastic blocks that are made for building horse jumps...they are sorta textured plastic bricks, 3-4 times the size of cinder blocks....in the same area. Me and the goats use them as stepping stones in the muddiest weather, and the goats play on them year-round.

 

[savingdogs]

Free, my husband has been raking it up into a long pile down the middle of the yard, which of course the goaties like to climb on! We keep thinking one of these days, it will dry out, but we never get more than one dry day in a row. So that stuff is HEAVY.
We did add straw last year and that turned into adobe. I was thinking of putting straw down in the goat barn however. I'm concerned that they are not getting a chance to get their feet dry. We have a base of gravel but we haven't SEEN it since fall.

 

[Cindlady2]

Welcome to WISCONSIN!!!
oh sorry, your in Calli

If your looking for a temporary solution, since mud and rain are foreign to you, I would go with 2 x 4s and plywood or if you can get your hands on some shipping pallets that could be much cheaper.

As for us.... looks like we have some grading to do before next year!:/

 

[savingdogs]

I'm actually FROM Cali and moved here to WA, but I've been here awhile.

I have TONS of pallets. I would be afraid the goaties would catch their legs in these?

And if I put them in the chicken and duck run, wouldn't they be awful to remove later?

I do have one board in the mud to walk across, maybe I should add more big flat safe boards?

 

[freemotion]

You can take the boards from one pallet to close up the gaps in another. It is free! And you can cut them in half to make narrower pallets so you won't need so many.

 

[savingdogs]

There is no shortage of pallets....hubby is a packrat and he collects them for some weird reason. I have like four mounds of pallets, taller than myself. I think I might use them more for the chickens than the goats, these are flimsy wood and have sat out all winter getting weak. But the chickens......and perhaps I can just have a bonfire with them in the summer? What do you do with pooped on old pallets?

Where is the emoticon where the smiley face person is up to their eyeballs in mud? That is me!