…or some such hippie chemistry. If you let your chicken yard ‘deep compost’ get too far out of hand, Al Gore sends a SWAT team or an air strike with napalm or some damn thing, I forget. One thing’s for sure, you start smelling manure.
What’s also sure is that the yard of the Fortress of Attitude needed digging out before I hurt my shoulder, and that was almost three months ago. So yesterday along with the usual pellets I bought two straw bales. One went to Landlady’s place, the other was for the Fortress. But first I had to dig out some of the compacted, moisture-saturated and only partly-rotted straw and manure already there, at least eight inches deep.
I took out four wheelbarrows worth and stirred up most of the rest before running out of steam, then brought in the new straw. At that point it’s time for the chickens to do some of the work themselves.
And they will, too. They love digging and looking for bugs. By this afternoon they’ll have all those flakes separated and flung everywhere. I’ll need to go in three or four times during the process to clean out their waterer.
These four remaining hens are one round tuit away from the butchering sink and the freezer. The pullets are fully on-line now as little egg-laying machines, and I’m out of excuses. If I put new hens in with old it causes nothing but trouble and these aren’t good for much anyway. So pretty soon Seymour’s going to get some new lady friends.
I bet that if Al Gore ever found out about your small operation and the generation of methane it would make him cry, and that’s a good thing.