Spoiled Hay
November 1st, 2015 · No Comments · Posted in farming
Last winter I fed our livestock by tossing hay bales onto the ground. It’s not the smartest practice, since the animals end up walking on the hay and defecating on it. The result: lots of wasted hay.
For months now, I’ve had piles of spoiled hay composting in place. Potentially, it’s great for the soil, full of earthworms and beneficial microbes. But it was never my intention to redesign our farm topography with piles of stuff, so lately I’ve been picking up that rotting hay and moving it to our big compost pile.
There’s a lot to be said for having a big compost pile on a farm. It’s the one place, for instance, where you can bury dead animals without having to dig a hole in the ground. Our pile has concealed inside it one ewe who died of worms last winter, a few chickens and the fox that killed them. Also, after each meat chicken harvest, all the chicken guts and heads and feet get buried in the compost.
Someday, that compost will make a mighty fine amendment to the soil in our raised garden beds.
To gather the old hay off the ground, we scrape it into a pile using the edge of the bucket on our tractor, then scoop it up with pitch forks. Here my nephew Reid demonstrates how it’s done. Yesterday we cleaned up the last of these piles. And can I just say, having help was a huge pleasure.
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