The Return of the Friday Chore Day

I'm not complaining about hot, humid weather now, am I?  Glorious crisp, cool autumn weather is upon us, and I'm trying to knock out as many chores as I can before snow flies.  Thank goodness for my every other Friday off!

I haven't worked on the alpine garden because I really wanted to get the manure pile moved before winter.  You can see how much the pile had grown over the last year - in the background to the right of the barn.  That's just a fraction of it.

I picked away at the pile a few weeks ago and moved it over to where the forest garden will be.  Today I snipped some wayward saplings and then spent two and a half hours bucketing manure across the yard.  That old tractor of mine sure does a number on a body!  I feel like I've been beaten half to death, but the pile is moved.  What little I couldn't manage to scrape up I hand raked and spread it around.  It will compost nicely over the winter and add to the soil back there.  

 

The stall mats are out because the rat plague has reached a zenith of infuriating activity.  From what I understand, they are awful everywhere this year.  I don't really feed grain to the mules, so I'm not sure what they're after, but they break through every barrier I put up.  I'll be working on a solution to that - they're too smart to get trapped, but I've found a second one dead in the water bucket.  A sinister plan is hatching!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the driveway...

 Manure has been dumped, then hand raked to get the worst of the lumps out.  The tractor can't get any further up the bank than what's there now, it's steeper than it looks.  Once we have snow I'll haul my daily manure up to the wall area via my manure sled and dump it.  I still have to cut some more saplings and brush toward the end of the driveway area, but that will open up easily accessible areas to dump the manure from now until snow flies.  I still have some 50/50 mix that I'll start spreading over the manure, and next year hopefully I can add either some more of that or topsoil.  I should be able to start planting in here next summer, so long as we get a good winter to rot that manure down.  I'm excited to create this garden, especially in among the mossy rocks and tree roots.  I love the ferns that are already there, and will be adding more.

Between this project and the backyard gardens, I have enough going on to keep me busy for the next few years.  Boy, those garden centers love to see me coming!