Making the best of Indian summer...............

This is an enormous mountain of composted manure...............10 years worth. The pile is out behind the barn and continues to grow each day. This past summer we had 3 acres of new land cleared of trees and stumps for pasture. This manure needed to be spread but it's been so wet due to all the rain we've had, it's been impossible to get a machine on the fields without getting stuck. On Thursday, we hired a friend of ours to come with a small dozer to push this mountain onto one of the new pastures. This pasture is on the south side of the cow pasture. With lots of help and this great compost, we should have terrific grass this spring for our new lambs and calves. I have to do things in such small steps and creating more pasture is such an accomplishment!! It's less hay we have to purchase and that is a huge savings and I would prefer to feed the grass as long as I can.

It's really starting to look like pasture in this photo. The dirt smells great. The manure was really composted. It is black and rich and smells so full of nutrients and good stuff. I will need to spread a good quantity of lime on this soil as we are very acidic here. This ground was a pine forest not to long ago.

Doesn't it look fabulous? No more manure pile. The barn is to the left in this photo. Previously you couldn't see the cows run in shed behind the manure pile. I am so happy to see it gone. As time permits we will remove the wire fencing in front of where the cow is standing and replace it with 2x6 three rail fence which is what we have on the opposite side which you cannot see in the photo. We will add another gate for this pasture.

Now that the big manure pile is gone, we will put the manure from the stalls in a small pile and when we have a tractor bucket full we will go to the end of this pasture and spread it out. That way it will not ever build up into a huge pile again and we can fertilize right up until the snow is too deep. We will stock pile it through the winter and spread it all in the spring.

At the end of a happy day, we had a small surprise party for my Mom, who celebrated her 69th birthday. Does she look a little surprised?!

We really surprised her with a new recliner for her home. One of the rare times that she didn't know what to say :) She was so happy and thankful. No one more deserving than my Mom in my book. She's just the sweetest lady. That's my nephew, Dave, in the rocker enjoying the moment. It was a great little party and we all enjoyed carrot cake and ice cream.

~Thanks for visiting with us at Tylerfarm~