Wood Shaving By The Yard

Our friend, Dolan, asked Doyle if he would like a truckload of wood shavings from the mill in town. We were needing to get some for the chicken house so the timing could not have been more perfect. Dolan said he would bring them early the next morning and he was right on the money. I thought he was bringing a dump truck load. He brought a humongous truckload. 44 yards to be exact. That was much larger than a dump truck, it was like 4+ dump trucks. He put it way in the back of the coral and it is a monster pile. We filled as many bags as we could find places for and stored them in the loft of the barn. We had to lock the cows out of this area until we could finish. It was scheduled to rain so time was of the essence.

We finally let the cows back into this area. The cows love to be up on any hill they can climb. Doyle says this will "enrich" the future compost these shavings will become. This is basically how we got the last mountain of compost. We made it with a similar pile of sawdust. It took about 3 years and lots of stirring with the tractor but it made some very good stuff. It is wonderful to have a huge pile of pretty compost at my disposal.

The pile has been smooshed down considerably since is first arrived. The cows went ape-crazy over this fun stuff. It liken it to ball pits at Chuck-E-Cheese. Except for cows and not children.

Even the bull had his turn in it. I wish I could have seen this sight first hand but Doyle got the pictures while I was away at the dental conference. I would rather watch cows frolic in the wood shavings pile.

We added more to the chick brooder too. They love this stuff! We waited until they were here for about 5 days before we uncovered the shavings and removed the overlying newspaper. I didn't want them eating it and not the food we put out. Once they know where the food is, that isn't a problem anymore. This little one thought she was hidden from sight. Pretty close but not completely.

Here you can see just how far down she burrowed into the fluff. I thought that was cute. They are still afraid but I do have a friendly one, a little barred rock that comes right up and isn't fearful at all. She lets me pick her up and comes back for more when I walk in. I wish the rest of them would get over their fear of the new mommy (me). I think that looking down at them makes them feel like prey, it should get much better when they are out of the brooder. I hope.

My Compost In Need of Remodel

I got this very cool compost tumbler for my birthday a couple years ago. Does anyone see the trend here? Pygmy goats, compost tumblers. My next birthday is coming up and I fear what is next. Actually, I loved this gift and the goats are still growing on me. We chose this one by Mantis. It is called a ComposT-Twin Compost Tumbler. It has two 10 bushel chambers so you can fill one while you cook the other. The company claims 14 days to Brown Gold but it is really more like 6 weeks in my world. I probably could get it done a little faster if I really paid attention to it but I get easily side tracked. This will be the third year with this gadget and I really like it. Plus non-gardeners are always asking funny questions about it, which is often a good laugh for us.

The real problem lies in the pile we have waiting to go into the compost tumbler. This is not so pretty and I plan to do something about that this year. In the beginning we tried to contain it with some left over wire cattle panels.

I had tons of sod to add and didn't want to put it in the pile inside the cage so I dumped it out in front. Sod is very heavy when first removed from a new planting bed. We recently acquired a chipper/shredder so now the options are endless. We are going to shred all this stuff and add it to a newly built compost system. My husband just doesn't know this yet. I have to let him come up with the plan and then I will pull out the drawings and pictures of how I want it to look. We are getting awfully handy with the little building projects. That little willow shrub needs to come out too but that is another day, another project. One step at a time around here.