Shoveling manure

I was going to title this "Shoveling sh*t" to get the alliteration, but went the PG route. At times the manure I shoveled today sure did smell like sh*t. Believe me, I know. My father owned a trailer park when I was a kid and the park had its own sewer system. Sometimes a sewer line would break and we had to repair the pipe. Sh*t, when old, has a certain smell.

The smell was not pleasant, but I am a man, so I "cowboyed up" and continued to shovel.

Some of the cattle manure I shoveled today was from a year and a half ago when Dan and I kept the 11 head of cattle he was weaning in a small part of the corral. The manure piled up. The smell of the lower layer of manure when pried off the ground today brought back memories of fixing sewer pipes, especially as the lowest layer - even after a year and half - was still moist.

The manure level in some areas was so thick grass couldn't grow through it. I decided to rake and shovel it and move it to some low areas elsewhere in the corral. I'll see later if it was a good idea to pile it in those places.

I worked many hours and cleared 2/3 of the area from a year and half ago. The rest of this area I will leave for now. This remaining manure is pretty dry and aged and I want to add it to my garden this Fall after harvest. It should be pretty potent stuff. I also want to clear the area around the feeder from this year. The manure is thick there.

Now if I had a tractor with a loader or blade this job would have been done in less than an hour. Instead I had to do it the old fashioned way. I guess exercise is good for a person.

Middle pasture check

I checked the middle pasture when out checking gopher traps in the other pastures. The cattle have made their rounds and checked out the boundaries according to the matted grass.

And yes, even though the grass is tall,I see they spent plenty of time eating the grass on the other side of the fences. The grass is tall enough that many disappear in it when they sit down.

I see the cattle tried to get down a steep bank to the river and the grass growing below. I had one strand of barb wire strung between tall trees on the river bank and it looks as if one of the cattle may have attempted to crawl underneath the wire. *sigh*

I did trap 3 gophers and 2 pocket gophers today. I checked the traps earlier than normal as I had seen three or four hawks circling the pastures over the gopher areas. I wanted to remove any dead gophers from traps before the hawks tried to carry the gopher and traps away.