Relative Something

In our new world of country living on 20 acres with horses, cats, and a dog, 2 tractors, an ATV, a spare pickup truck, plus 3 outbuildings, we frequently find ourselves facing tasks with which we have no previous experience. Yesterday’s ‘first’ was using the diesel tractor to clean manure in the paddocks.

Our horses arrived at the end of September last year, so this has been our first winter with them. After the fall season in which we tried to clean the paddocks almost daily, the winter weather introduced a whole new challenge to our system. The snow covers and freezes the daily accumulations and we pretty much stopped trying to do any cleaning at all.

I asked our neighbor, George, how they deal with the situation at their farm. He stated matter of factly that they just wait until the snow melts and then scoop out the entire top layer of soil and manure. I fear ours will be a muddy mess that will keep our machines out of there until summer, so I was weary of how simple he made it sound.

Last week, while out shopping for hay nearby, we drove from the east on the county road that passes just south of our place. It was the very first time I have traveled that stretch of road since we moved here. We had yet to see the view of our place from that direction in the year-and-a-half we have been here.

While we were out on that trip, we noticed a farm where they piled the manure right inside their paddock. With all our snow finally melting, the months of manure are getting revealed in our paddocks, so I suggested we consider doing the same. The mess in our paddocks is big enough that I figured we would need to use the tractor, but I was unsure about whether I could successfully navigate the challenging terrain. The driveway was melting and would be a mud pit. The snow was still deep in some areas and the wheels of the tractor might not get me through. The ice could leave me spinning in place.

While surveying the situation, Cyndie spent precious time brushing out the shedding coat of each horse. I tried raking some manure by hand, and quickly learned it was still too frozen to be very effective with that mode. It would definitely take the power of the tractor to make any measurable progress.

In hindsight, I think we picked the perfect day for this task because it was a day when the temperature stayed below freezing. The tractor was able to make good progress in scraping the top layer of accumulated manure, and in so doing removed a lot of snow. If we had tried this on a day when it was warmer it would have been a muddy mess.

We ended up with a giant pile in one corner, but that should shrink significantly when the snow portion melts away. I think we did pretty well with our first try at using the tractor to clean the paddock. It was, in fact, one of the primary reasons we anticipated needing that tractor in the first place.

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