Cleaning Stalls and Other Spring Things

Friday we cleaned one stall. Since we've reduced the herd by almost half we could leave the stall empty and let it dry out for a day, but with all the rain I doubt we will be able to. We'll probably have to let the buck and the steer in for the night.

We also cleaned out the turkey brooder. We bought 5 turkeys on March 22. They are growing well. We started them on Game Bird Starter and they are now on 20% lay pellets. When the weather warms up a bit they will go out with the chickens.

We picked up and packed away the feed empty bags that were taking over the barn. They are great for when we are weeding and need to send the noxious weeds to the dump. They hold a lot and are much sturdier than the lawn and leaf bags we can buy at the store. Plus, these are free.... sort of. We had to pay for the feed, but we consider it recycling. The best kind of recycling because it doesn't use any resources to break down a finished product to turn it into something new.

Here's the little lamb we brought home from Lamb and Wool Festival on April 12th. He was about 3 weeks old in this picture.

The lamb (Vet2Be named him "Stew") is doing well and doesn't mind hanging out with the steer, Dinner. We keep him in a nice stall most of the time because he's so small he fits through all the fencing!

Cleaning the Barn

On Saturday Hubby and I cleaned out the barn. Vet2Be was at the state fair showing dairy goats for his 4-H leader so he wasn't here to help.

He'll be helping over the next few days, though. His job is to burn all the twigs and sticks that are lying around the yard.

Barns get stacked with stuff! 

All the wheat was moved to the top of the tack room, the pallets were taken out and cleaned, Hubby tilled and smoothed the area that will hold 6 tons of hay (hopefully!)

Vet2Be and Hubby above the tack room reinforcing the ceiling so we could store the wheat up high. There is no more room for food storage in the house. Even though the barn isn't the best place for storing wheat, the wheat will be good enough to keep us alive if dire days hit our family.

All the old hay was cleaned out from the pallets. I think it's been 5 years since we did that. Not much mold, but enough that we were glad we took the time to clean them.

The chickens are doing their job! They are spreading the old hay around the dry lot so that Hubby can till it in and eventually plant grass here!

Just a few more hens working almost as hard as we did!

There is still more to do! Vet2Be will be burning the piles of sticks left from the 6 trees that were taken down this year (you can see a small pile behind the chickens in the photo above). We are getting hay in about 1 1/2 weeks--6 tons--and that all has to be stacked. The garden is still producing, so there is still some preserving to do...

And I really, really want to try my new cheese maker!