Animals

Picnic, Anyone?

Yesterday was day one of a new building project here on the farm.

We are building a picnic pavilion in the woods.

There is a small area of woods next to our vegetable garden

that has had a lot of fallen trees in the past few years.

Wind damage in that area has made the woods look scruffy.

Yesterday, the dead trees were cut and removed...

creating a 30 X 50 foot clearing.

The work soon turned into a neighborhood project.

Jim and Kathy and Hubbs fed the tree limbs into our chipper.

The chipper filled the back of the gator...

while the excavator moved more debris for us to chip...

And I moved gator loads of chipped pine into the horses dry lot.

As you can see, Red was quite happy to have soft bedding on the ground

and wasted no time in trying it out.

A few of the tree tops were given to the goats for a treat.

Next to Ritz crackers, pine needles are the goats' favorite snack.

By the time they are finished, there will be no more needles or bark left on these limbs.

Then into the chipper they will go

and the remainder will be placed in the dry lot for the horses.

We waste nothing around here!

Perhaps even a little more exciting for me will be the construction

of a brand new composting outhouse outside the barn!

(No more hiking 1/4 mile back to the house for potty breaks.)

Even Ginger and MaryAnn came out of their house to see what all the excitement was...

I will keep you posted with our progress in the days to come.

You know.... this means that Spring is just around the corner!!

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Animals