Cleaning the Pasture

Today we cleaned the west pasture... okay, we shoveled cow shit.  We moved the cows out of the pasture over a week ago to let it grow while they graze on the east pasture.  If we leave the cow pies where they lay, we're told that the cows will avoid the grass around it for three years.  By scooping them up, we get compost in the garden and keep the pasture at 100% cow food.  Working in teams, one person with a garden fork and one with the wheel barrow, we got it done in two hours, but I feel like I've put in a long hard day.

Cow shit isn't nearly as bad as some things, but it isn't pleasant either.  At lunch my 15 year-old recounted at length how bad the smell was.  But it really wasn't that bad.  The chickens received the benefit of our labor.  Those cow pies are full of bugs and worms.  They swarmed it for hours.

Our sick chicken isn't any better, but she isn't any worse either.  Even if she gets better, she has stopped laying and I don't know if she'll start again.  Unfortunately since we separated her, she has now become special.  One of my twins has given her a name, "Soody."  I can't imagine that chicken is feeling fine and it seems humane to put it out of it's misery, but I care more about the feelings of my daughter than the feelings of the chicken.  We'll wait a while longer.

An important part of the self-sufficient lifestyle is seed saving.  There is strategy and skill to real seed saving, but this year I'm only doing the easy stuff (I have to leave something to learn next year!).  Today we gathered lettuce seed.  I turned the flower heads over into a bucket and gave them several good thwacks to knock the seed in.  We got seed and fluff and little crawlies.  I put a lid on the bucket and set it aside.  Hopeful in a week the crawlies will have all died of old age.

We have been buying our wheat at the Boise Co-Op for a while.  If we had an extra acre we'd grow our own, but we don't.  They carry an Idaho Organic wheat at a pretty reasonable price.  I don't know if the wheat would qualify us for the 100-mile diet, but I decided that I'm going to focus on my state rather than a 100-mile radius.  At least I know I'm buying from people who are paying taxes in my state.  A month or two ago the Co-op was having a *fantastic* sale on that Idaho Organic wheat.  Whereas we normally pay about eighty cents per pound, it was only thirty-five cents!  The fellow said the farmer has a large harvest and they were moving the grain for him.  At such great prices, we bought 600 pounds, enough for a year.  It doesn't seem wise to keep it in the paper bags that long, so we got food-grade buckets and transferred it.  When we were done we had sixteen buckets and a bunch of empty bags to show for our work.

A bucket full of grain, pure and dry, is a beautiful thing.  Sixteen of them sitting in the basement, safe from mold and crawlies, is like wealth and safety.  Bring on the winter!