It's the long-awaited coolness of Autumn which allows me to engage in productive physical farm work. I've cleaned out the goose and duck houses, exchanging clean straw for mounds of dirty litter. The chicken house took only a day.
Now, the goat barn clean up is in progress. The upper part is mostly raked out, with dried manure and old wasted hay hauled out in my Mule UTV. I'm tackling the lower part now, which requires me to get large mounds of the wasted remains of large round bales in order to work the gates. That would allow me easier entrance and exit with the Mule.
This will take a great many daily forays before it's accomplished. This will be my work outs as long as the weather permits. I cannot do it while the goats are "in" because they invariably hop in the driver's seat of the UTV while I'm raking to check and see if they can drive it. The other day, they managed to dislodge the ignition key. Long searching finally located it in the hay. 'Not quite a needle, but still...
In the middle part of the barn, where wooden gated stalls are located, giant cobwebs hang down from the ceiling. It is truly halloweenish and it is impossible to walk through without getting my hair topped with the wispy strands. The only way to make the area more people friendly is to take a broom and literally sweep the cobwebs from the ceiling. That is something I can do with goats present, but I cannot leave the broom down there because the goats will eat it!
Mostly, I check to see if the herd is somewhere in the pastures before I go down to the big barn.
The trees have now turned their cheerful Fall colors and sunshine this week will encourage the continuation of the great barn cleaning of 2014.
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