A Tiny Taste of Spring

Today it got up to a whopping 40 degrees here in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Pretty amazing, seeing as they are having ice storms down in Kentucky!

I took advantage of the warmer weather and did some much needed poop scooping in the sheep pen and equine paddock. The sheep pen is actually quite easy to clean. I use a fine-tined rake and a long-handled bucket to scoop up the hay and poops. However, the donkey and horse paddock is an entirely different matter. Due to the warmer weather, some of the manure raked up pretty easily. However, there are quite a few piles that were solidly cemented to the ground. Of course, I could wait until it warms up even more in order to scoop those out...but then I'll have an icky, sloppy, mucky mess. Instead, I chose to take a heavy duty three-tined fork and chip those patties off of the ground. Typically it only took one or two good stabs with the fork to loosen the "poopsicle" - then once it was free I'd pick it up (with my heavy duty farm mittens) and fling it over the fence towards the woods. The whole time I was thinking to myself "I wonder if I could convince Evan (my 10 year old son) that flinging frozen poop is going to become an Olympic sport?" Needless to say, my shoulders and arms got quite a workout and I'm going to need to take another dose of ibuprofen before bed.

AHHH...the joys of warmer weather....!