02/22/2009 Sunday: Cleaning Stalls, Future Grape Arbor Composting

Sunny this morning but it rained last night. It actually spit once or twice but basically the sun shone all day.

Gabe is coming to work with me this morning. I think we'll clean the center stall where I give the Dexters their treats and the mucky area around the Dexter feeder. We'll put in lots of wood chips. The wood chips I put in late last year seem to have disappeared.

We only managed to get the center stall cleaned out in the two hours we had available. Gabe had to leave to go shopping with his mom at 2pm.

It was incredibly sticky muck to work in. I had Gabe back the tractor in part way into the stall and then had him drop the box scraper. He pulled out a wad of muck which we proceeded to load into the bucket by hand. He dumped a pile and came back for more scraping and loading. People couldn't even stand in the stall without having their boots sucked off their feet.

We eventually got the area dug out but we did not get a chance to load in more shavings. I'll have to do that after work perhaps or wait till this weekend when Gabe comes back.

We piled up the compost in a long windrow alongside the tack room so that I can get that area ready for planting grapes. Now we have quite a pile of compost ready to break down into lovely soils. I might be able to get two rows of posts and wires to run along the side of the tack room. The compost is mounded for now but once it's usable as a soil amendment we'll level it and start planting. It will take a year for the compost to break down.

It would be nice to be able to take cuttings but I might break down and buy various grape plants. The spot along the tack room is south-facing and is very sunny and hot so it should be a great place for grapes.

Chas and I made stew with some of our beef, carrots and red potatoes along with two onions. We ate it with some of the bread we made yesterday.

I spent part of the evening making a template for the 2009 tax year for collecting information on purchases. I still need to do a variety of additional forms. I may even buy a software program to use instead of Excel although it seems to do well for my simple-minded needs.