My Friday Afternoon Project...

Ever since I messed up my back a couple of years ago, I've tried to find ways to do things "smarter", and to make things less stressful on all of our aging ?!? bodies.

When we milk, we have two buckets that follow us around the cow stable. One has steaming hot water in it, and the other holds our biodegradable paper towels, a cow thermometer, a scissors, extra milk tubes, etc.  We also each use a sprayer filled with an iodine spray, used to spray the cows' teats after we take off the milkers.

The way we used to do it...carry the buckets over from the milk house...bend over each time we wet a paper towel...pick up the buckets and move them ten feet...repeat over and over until we're finished milking. Believe it or not, seemingly innocently bending over like that, time after time, day after day, year after year is hard on your back.  (Imagine bending something over and over in the same direction.  Eventually it weakens and can break) So...a simple solution was to put those buckets on a wagon, getting them up off the ground.

The wagon we had been using rusted out, so I found a replacement online.  It was delivered yesterday, and this was my project for this afternoon...

I enjoy projects like this...

My helpers slept through almost the whole process...

It took about 30-45 minutes, and it's all finished and ready to go!

The wagon came with removable sides, but the jury is still out on whether or not we use them.  I put them on for tonight, and we'll see how it goes.  You know...I had to take pictures of this, because it's the absolute cleanest that this wagon will ever be!

More likely than not, it'll be splattered with pazutski inside of five minutes!

Excavating Project...

There's no end to the projects that need done around the farm.  This mild winter has allowed us to complete some, and get started on some others...

Jim over seeded the meadow  earlier in the week, we've been working on repairing some fencing, I've been brainstorming about how to keep my renegade chickens in their pen, we had snow guards put on the barn roof (and have had no snow to speak of!!), and we've finally been able to get some excavating work started.


We have several water ways on the farm...all part of a conservation plan intended to channel water to the correct spots and avoid excess erosion and run off.  The one waterway needed some work, but it's been challenging to get it done, because the ground hasn't been able to dry out.  We've just had too much moisture!  This week, they finally had a chance to get it started...

Wouldn't it be fun to push dirt around with this...
 

There were several dump truck loads of beautiful topsoil that they dumped along the other waterway.  Jim used some of it to fill in some ruts...
 

...and we used some of the rest of it to fill in some areas in the yard that need to be reseeded.  The rest of it...I'm hoping to put on my garden!  It could use some fresh soil worked in with all those decaying leaves before I begin planting in late April!

As for the excavating project...there's still more to do.  The bottom end of the waterway needs to be cleaned out, and we need to have some tiling done.  It's still too wet, however, so it could be a while until we can finish. Hopefully this spring won't be nearly as wet as last spring, and it will happen sooner rather than later!


But...it's raining today...