Shakstead

Welcome back to The Shak.


My effort to catch up on blogging continues. This will be rather shorter than my last few posts. It is nothing earth-shattering, but it may interest you nonetheless.


I am not exactly sure when I did the work. It may have been April. But whenever I did the work, I ended up with a compost pile.

After having trimmed many trees in the yard, I found myself with an abundance of relatively straight, long branches. I spent some time stripping off the little branches and piled the sticks around three sides of the area I wanted to cover.

With the sticks in place, I laid in grass clippings, rabbit droppings mixed with straw, cooking waste and whatever else I figured would compost. Then I covered it all with a layer of topsoil and watered it well.


I also ran hoses from the double basin in the courtyard through the fence. This keeps the water form the basins from draining into the courtyard and directs it where it is of use.

I have been dumping all I can in the composter. The whole thing gets rotated almost weekly. Which is  to say every time I clean the barn. The chickens scratch it up daily and I get all my fishing worms out of it. I just turn over a pitchfork full and pick them out. It also gives me a lot of highly nutritious mulch for the garden. I must be doing something right. It smells like dirt.


Thanks for stopping. Come again soon.