Hello Everyone!
The wee berm has a secret ingredient, Cleaning up rat trash, Ending a dirt experiment & Doing a bunch of stuff!
Alright, I am off to a slow start with the writing routine this evening... but at least I am on time. Hopefully, the espresso that I brewed will kick in soon... and the heaping scoop of ice cream that I put in it... does not cause me to have too much of a sugar crash before I can spell things out.
Having woken up not all that long after dawn this morning... I have had an incredibly long day. I am unsure what time that I drifted off last night... but it was rather late even though I was trying to get to sleep much earlier.
The weather today was kind of odd because although it was a balmy sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit... the slight (but nearly constant breeze) made it feel much colder than it actually was. Also, every time that I found myself in the shade for any amount of time... I had to put a sweater on given just how much different the temperature was.
Since I have been wanting to have a fire in the next couple of days (wind and weather permitting) one of the first things that I did was get the ashes... and the partially burnt material shoveled out of the fire-pit. I know that I had said that I was going to use the ashes on the compost... but I once again added them to the top of that new berm.
Something that I have not mentioned about that berm before is that I keep adding dog poop to it... and then keep covering it over with soil, clay and ashes. The main reason because of that is due to how my eldest dog tends to not be able to hold her bowel movements... and pretty much every night I find at least one turd near her hindquarters.
A while back I had gotten a box that contained one thousand and eighty biodegradable dog waste bags... and although it might be wasteful I use one of the bags (if I do not have some cardboard or paper on hand) to clean up the often 'firm' turds. I then take the bag (or cardboard/paper) along with the waste it contains... and toss it onto the berm to be buried in the morning.
All in all the system is working well... and although some of it is sheer laziness on my part... another part of doing things that way is because I want to see just how biodegradable the bags actually are. The only real downside that I can see is that before the temperatures warm up for the year... I will need to do a full encasement on the mound with ashes and clay much like how I do the compost mounds to stop the flies.
Anyways, I did not mention it last night... but after taking a bath I once again loaded the tub with laundry while the water was still mostly hot. This time I had a bunch of pants, shorts and a few shirts that needed to be cleaned... or 'sterilized' as I like to put it.
Given that I was going to have a bunch of dirty work to do today... I got all the laundry removed from the tub and hung up on the dog yard fence... so that it could begin drying out. Lately I have taken to putting all the laundry on/in my outdoor PVC chair, then letting the bulk of the water drain away... before carrying the chair to the fence... which just makes it all easier given it is not so heavy to lug around that way.
Afterwards, I immediately got the water pumped out of the tub... and once again I settled on just spraying it out with a high pressure nozzle... instead of scrubbing it out to get it clean. As a side note I never quite got to the point of taking a bath today... but at least the tub is empty and I will not have to fiddle with it all the next time that I want/need to get a bath.
The next task that I tackled was to run the dogs on the rodents in the shop tent again... as well as on that lumber pile that is near it. Oddly enough, we did not find any rodents this time... and I did not even see any new nest or rat poop... either in the lumber pile or the shop tent itself.
Once I put the dogs back inside the dog yard, I headed over to the site where the travel trailer used to be, cleaned up the last of the actual trash there... and brought the big garbage can that was located there back to the shop tent. After fitting a fifty gallon 'heavy MIL' trash bag in it, I then used a rake and flat-head shovel to scoop all the material that the rats had made nest with into the bag... from around both the lumber pile and inside the shop tent.
Granted there was a lot of leaves in the mix of 'rat trash' but whoa it wound up filling almost the entire bag by the time that I was done. I still have more of it to clean out of the tent... but I did not have it in me today to pull everything out of the tent... and give it the kind of full cleaning that it truly needs.
On a different note. I finally ended an experiment that I began when I first moved into the shelter site... where I took a bunch of dog waste, dirt and leaves and added them into some old totes that leaked. Basically, the UV from the sun had made the totes brittle... and given that so much time had passed I figured it was time to flip them over, see what kind of dirt they had made... and break the totes themselves up and throw them away.
I have to admit that the results of the experiment surprised me... because the soil that got created was the blackest/darkest that I have ever made thus far in all my years of dirt farming... even if it is rather stinky... from some water remaining in the totes as it was all breaking down. Now, I just have to harvest the four large 'blocks' of it from where I dumped the totes out at... before the rain can come and wash any of it away.
At first I was going to put all the parts of the totes (after breaking them down) into another of those trash bags... but immediately realized that the pieces were too sharp and would just wind up piercing the bag. So, I wound up using an empty dog food bag (to stuff them into) because they are super stout... and do not rip or tear very easily.
After all that jazz was done, I yet again switched gears and drug the wagon up and down one of the roads here... and collected two more loads of firewood to add to the pile that I started making yesterday. Although I did not collect quite as much pine as I was thinking to at first... I did hike out into the woods and collected a few pieces of pine 'fat lighter' (fatwood) so that the rest of the 'damp' wood will burn better.
Admittedly, once I was done lugging the wagon around I was pretty wiped out... so I ate a small sandwich and summarily took a much needed nap. I slept super soundly for the better part of two hours... but whoa I had some weird dreams during that time... and was relieved that I woke up exactly at the beginning of my timeframe for my writing routine.
Well, I think that is about it for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well... and not creating any unnecessary drama for others. Ta ta for now.
First time I ever heard the term Berm - ever hahah
Haha! You are the second person (in the last few months) that mentioned having not encountered that word!
The rats must have found a warmer place to hide.
That is good-looking soil, I would like to make the soil that we need but we would need 50 or so more dogs. We have to buy a dump truckload at a time.
I found two big ones that had drowned in a tote (in another area) so I think that might have had something to do with it.
Yeah, that got me to thinking about how much dirt I am actually creating each year. Minus the soil in the topsoil trap I think that I am making around eighty to a hundred gallons worth a year.
That is kinda genius to add the dog terds to the berm! And i dont think it is a waste to use the biodegradable bags for transporting them. That is what they are for ~ to contain the potential parasites & smells while they decompose then releasing it all, now neutral, back to Earth.
Yeah, it has been working rather well! My big plan is to plant (or transplant) some grass into the berm in a few months when things warm up. I will have to keep the chickens out of it (probably by hooping chicken wire over it) but hopefully I can get some grass growing there. It gets a lot of sun each day and water from both the buildings so it should work well.