Can You Dig It?

I am never more content with my body than after a days work outside in the garden and all that tending to it entails. Hard work, physical work, honest work makes me feel......relaxed in my body like no other work can.

Today was coop cleaning day. This job is a process and cleaning the coop itself isn't even the first step.

The first step is to remove the layers of hay off all the beds in the front yard. I have tried planting cover crops for overwintering and it was a serious backfire!

To this day, I am fighting the clover I laid down a couple of years ago. Its called cover crop for a reason! A thick blanket of it grows over a quarter of the front yard. If I want to plant there, I have to spend an hour bent over, pulling scraping and yanking the clover out.

Next, I empty all the beautiful compost out of the bins. This gets spread out over the front yard beds. It is now that my inner fire is really lit up for Spring! The glorious smell of the compost always gets me going! This is a smell I will never tire of...dark, rich, crumbly soil. Throughout my life, in its darkest moments, my greatest comfort and solace has always come from lying on the earth. Soaking up the heat that comes from the black dirt and filling my nose with the scent of it.

Now at last, it's time to clean the coop. All the cedar shavings and manure get shoveled into the wheel barrow, rolled over to the empty compost bins, and layered in with the aforementioned clover. A good soaking of the mixture gets everything going. I will continue to add to it the normal yard waste and kitchen scraps that the chickens don't eat(which dosn't amount to a whole lot!)

A new layer of cedar shavings go down on the floor of the coop and the freshly scrubbed ladders the chickens use as roosts go back up. Now the coop is done!!