What are nice days made for? Work…

Although unpleasant to the eye, Kit enjoyed the old pile of wood.

Today was a relatively nice day.  The sun was shining, the temperature was right around 45 degrees, no wind, and it was Saturday.  Keeping animals and working a full time job gives me little time to get the chores done.  It is hard enough to get anything accomplished during the year, but for some reason, it is a lot harder to work outside in the winter.  Must be the cold…  But today I got some work done.

I have found that most people that keep animals have a hard time battling two very annoying issues; mud and trash.  Trash always piles up.  It isn’t really garbage, things like old fencing or wood boards you used at one point but don’t need anymore or random odds and ends that served a purpose, but that purpose is no longer remembered.  Mud is almost always inevitable.  Walking back and forth from the house to the barn creates a path that, over time, gets muddier and muddier.  Even in drier times, there is mud.  But in winter when it is above freezing, watch out!

I started my day off by shoveling gravel out of the Piscataway Creek.  This is good for two reasons.  First, it opens up the creek a bit and helps it flow better and second, it provides me with great gravel to put down on the muddy patches.  I filled about 16 wheel barrows and dumped them by the barn.  This sounds like a lot, but it unfortunately isn’t.  I will need another 20 at least to finish my path.  Then I decided to clean the yard a bit.  I found a great use for all of the old boards lying around, I put them in the mud and will pour gravel on top.  This accomplishes two tasks at once.  I cut up the remainder of the wood and will burn it in my stove.  I then went around picking up anything that wasn’t in use and either cleaning it and putting it away, or throwing it out.  The yard looks pretty good this evening.

The animals seem to like the graveling job and the wood planks in the mud.  The goats particularly don’t like mud.  Now that they have a nice path to the house, they spent the greater part of the afternoon running back and forth.

Now that things are cleaned up, I am going to relax…  After I feed and water the animals, clean out the stalls, move hay down from the loft, put the animals to bed, and clean my house.