Oh my aching body

I hid from the rain all week, but today was beautiful out and I knew I had work to do. My manure pile needed "sorting."

Oh, the blisters. Shovelful by shovelful, I dug up the oldest, composted material, and wheelbarrowful by wheelbarrowful, spread it on our hang. It is so tideous, I see the allure of a tractor. My poor back. I sat around all week last week, and made up for it today.

The steam was giving me a sickening smelling steam bath, and my rubber boots were way into the hot spots, almost burning my feet. I saw no sign of my baby rat family. Oh, except a hole in my tarp clearly chewed by their teeth!

Anyway, after spreading about half the pile, I turn the rest of it, and shovel all the relatively new manure to the back of the box. In a couple months, it will be composted and ready to be dug up again.

I pulled countless nettles (taller than me) and tried to get their evil root systems out too. I spread compost on these areas. There is no end in sight to blackberry brambles and nettles. The winter slowdown makes me feel like I have a fighting chance. Do I?

I think I may be the only person on Earth with this odd and tideous manure system. Since we have ponds and a creek, we are trying to be careful, keeping our manure box water-tight and I only spread the completely composted material, which resembles soil. (Stinky soil though!) We might be a little bit paranoid about protecting the fish, not just ours, our neighbor has 8 ponds and many more trout than we do. If anything happened to them because of us, I would feel so bad. And we'd probably have an insurance claim against us.

Baasha is such a pig in bad weather, he hides in his stall whenever possible and he must run laps in there at night, distributing manure in every possible place. The door is open! He can go outside to pee, but no. He likes to make work for me.

I've taken to kicking him out all day long, and he seems OK, he naps on the grass, and eventually goes out to the pasture where he nibbles the tips of the choicest grass only.

I am finally harvesting my carrots from our greenhouse, and they are oddly shaped and small. Hm. I wonder if it's possible to grow large, symmetrical carrots like at the grocery store. Does anyone have tips for me?

I am so exhausted, and it feels so lovely. Tonight might involve ibubrofen from all that shovelling.

(Note: The pics are of an oak/beech joining that is very special to the townsfolk because they represent a joining of their two villages. I forget which villages. Not far from our town.)

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Something very good is going to happen this week. I wish I could talk about it! It's blue, and the result of a wishbone I pulled out of a chicken I baked. My man made his first wishbone wish (Germans don't have the wishbone tradition), and he got his wish. (But it was my wish too!)