Three cheers for a pick!

This past week Mrs. True and I mucked out our goat shed. We use a "Deep Litter" method for taking care of the shed, so we only do this about once a year. It took a few hours, but it was not really that bad (and for us it is way easier than cleaning out the shed every week).

For those that have never heard of deep litter, the method is basically this:

Every day you strew straw over the parts of the floor that have visible manure or are wet. The floor slowly gets higher and higher over the course of the year. Once a year you clean it all out.

This works great in a desert habitat, as the upper layers tend to dry out, so you can't really smell anything. We have been using it for a few years now, and it is really easy.

We have always used an ensilage fork (which are made for this job) and a wheelbarrow (which are made for every job) to clean the shed out, but this time we tried a new tool for part of the job and were highly impressed. The new tool is a rail road pick. They don't look like they would do much, but they are perfect for getting the stuff broken up so that the ensilage fork can easily lift it away.

Instead of taking all day like we thought it would, it took only about 4 hours. I am blaming it on the pick.

We also went on a walk to the woods behind the local park, and found tons of old fruit trees (apples, peaches, pears, and plums). It must have been an orchard before it became a forest.

While we were there we found some Oregon grapes. We have made Oregon grape jelly before and loved the flavor, so we will be back later in the year to pick these ones. if they are still around.

Finally, while we were there I saw some berries that my dad told me as a child were poisonous ("Twinberries" he called them). Since I recently learned that a lot of the "poisonous" berries that I grew up avoiding only were poisonous if you ate the seeds, I decided to look these ones up. They were honeysuckle berries, and were in fact poisonous. Oh well :).