Poop

I love Throwback at Trapper Creek, but her area is so wildly different from mine that is usually leaves me jealous or confused. Here's a recent post, which I agree with totally in principle but I just can't apply in practice.

She has cows, one horse, and laying hens. Everybody's pastured when the grass is good, with rotational grazing for the four-leggers and chicken tractors for the hens. Pasturing works the manure into her beautiful grass. In the winter, she deep beds everybody and ends up with beautiful compost in the spring. Doesn't that sound awesome?

But how on earth do I modify that to work out here?

I have the one horse, who's easy to pick up after. (Really, there is nothing easier than scooping horse poop off of sand.) The goat poop ranges in size from very small to really tiny, and my manure fork can't pick it up. Are there goat poop forks? Does everybody else just ignore it? Goats don't poop much compared to horses, but I'm still concerned that the whole pasture will be carpeted in goat berries by the spring.

The other piece of the puzzle here is the wind. It's often windy, and it's occasionally incredibly windy. I think if I lived somewhere else, I could deep-bed the whole chicken run with shavings and capture the manure that way, but it's not an option here. I am considering buying a couple bales of straw and trying that, but I'm not sure it'll work.

There are a lot of farm/homesteading blogs about raising animals in more temperate climes, but I haven't found a single desert blog yet. I know I'm not the only person to raise backyard animals in the high desert, but surely I'm not the first one to write about it? Share some links if you've got them, please!

My compost experiments continue. It's been another frustrating experience - most compost articles are written for home gardeners who collect their potato peelings and lawn clippings and store them in a tiny bin. There's some stuff on county extension and .edu sites about small-scale farm composting - but they always have bedding mixed in with the manure. All the stats on carbon:nitrogen ratios assume you've got some straw or shavings in with the manure, and all the sites give different ratios for horse manure.

I tried one heap with sagebrush mixed in with the manure. It got hot pretty quickly, then cooled off and won't heat back up no matter how much I turn it or water it. It doesn't look done, but I am disgusted with it and ignoring it for now. My second heap is 95% manure. There's some shavings from the old chicken house, and some paper shreds from the paper shredder, and our tiny amounts of home compostables. I've watered it enough to break down the balls and keep the inside pretty moist, and I turned it last week for the first time. Much to my shock, it was steaming! I turned it more thoroughly last night, and it's uniformly hot and cooking! So there's one puzzle piece in place: just horse manure and water makes good compost.

And my last poop-related complaint: Once I manage to produce some compost, how the hell do I garden out here? I can build raised beds with cold frames, if I need to, but I don't know if I need to. The sun is so bright - should I site my garden beds near the buildings and fences so they get partial shade? Does sand + compost = dirt? What can I mulch with that won't blow away? This is all very confusing :(

Swamplands

So, as we were coming down out of the rocky hills, we saw some beautiful big clouds boil up over Peavine, and we wondered if it could possibly rain? Then after we cantered in, we all agreed that it really looked like that big blue wall of clouds was dropping rain on the southwest part of the valley? When my husband came and picked up the gear, he confirmed that it was, in fact, raining and headed our way.



Rain. What a bizarre idea. Water just falls from the sky? I got Dixie home and comfy before it started raining, but yes, Mel got rained on. If you're keeping track, I think she's gotten rained on at every ride but Tevis this year.

Rain also makes horses totally itchy.



This would be why I haven't shown you pictures of her amazingly pretty feet. I was too exhausted to take pics, then it started raining, and it hasn't really stopped yet. We've gotten at least an inch, possibly two! It's just been drizzling, but it's nonstop drizzle.

Mel wandered back over after her ride and got Farley comfortable, then we ordered pizza and bored my husband to death with yet more horse talk. We yapped forever, and I feel a lot better about how Dixie and I are doing in this crazy sport. They headed home Sunday morning.

Goats

While we were gone Saturday, G let the Scammers out of the crate again, and Billy picked on them til they ran through the fence, so G had to chase them into the barage and put them back in the box. Sunday I got up, only moderately sore, and fixed them a Nigerian Jail Cell - put chicken wire on the gate to the goat stall in the run-in. They were very happy to get out of the crate, very disappointed that my hay isn't 100% alfalfa leaf, and very sweet and friendly. We are considering a couple of long-term Nigerian Containment Solutions, and they should have more room to run around by the end of the week at least.

Dixie is filthy but seems fine. Friday was another one of those little breakthroughs where she really acted sweet on me - she swung her ass around and very clearly indicated that I was to scratch her tail. I scratched, and she rocked back and forth and made silly faces. Saturday was busy, and Sunday she was sweet again - let me scratch her head and neck and wiggled her lips a bit.

The mob of terrorist chickens have discovered my compost heap. Every day, they scratch it down, then I water it, add more manure, and rebuild it. I am not mad at all; I'm delighted that they're helping turn it! Sunday when I dug down and checked, the pile was actually steaming. I am so excited! I can grow bacteria!! Hell yeah.



I have some fabulous sunset/sunrise pics for yall. I'll share them later this week. Here's a picture of one of our crows, for Merri - we have two that hang around the neighborhood and croak mysteriously at me.