The autumn is winding down
Today was gorgeous, by Alaskan October standards -- sunny, in the 40s -- and probably one of the last nice days we'll have before it snows, so today was a "getting ready for winter" day. I cleaned up the garden beds for spring, tidied the greenhouse and battened it down, picked up loose stuff around the yard, mucked out the chickens, etc.
I also made the unpleasant discovery that this wet, rainy, windy summer soaked my sawdust pile. We picked up a good big load of sawdust from a local lumbermill when we first started keeping chickens three years ago and I've been using it for litter ever since. It's my own fault, too, because I knew that the tarp wasn't covering it very well, but every time I checked, it looked dry on top. It is dry on top ... just not underneath; the only parts that are still dry are the parts that were sporadically in contact with air when the tarp kept blowing off. The rest of it is sodden clear through, and we aren't going to have enough warm, sunny days to dry it out enough to put in the chickenhouse. I can still use it for compost, mulch and whatnot, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to scrape up enough dry sawdust to last all winter, and the lumbermills are probably shut down for the season (plus, until I move the old sawdust, I have nowhere to put new). If I do run out, I can always fall back on something else -- I can buy wood chips or straw, it's not like there aren't other options -- but I'm a little annoyed with myself for not figuring this out when there was time to do something about it.
... not too annoyed, though, because as minor inconveniences go, it wasn't much of a thing. It was a beautiful day, and I finally remembered to check my box of green tomatoes and found that quite a few of them had ripened up nicely (including some of the black ones, which are awesome looking; image-search for "black tomato" and you'll see what I mean). And I checked a bunch of stuff off my "to do" list.
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I also made the unpleasant discovery that this wet, rainy, windy summer soaked my sawdust pile. We picked up a good big load of sawdust from a local lumbermill when we first started keeping chickens three years ago and I've been using it for litter ever since. It's my own fault, too, because I knew that the tarp wasn't covering it very well, but every time I checked, it looked dry on top. It is dry on top ... just not underneath; the only parts that are still dry are the parts that were sporadically in contact with air when the tarp kept blowing off. The rest of it is sodden clear through, and we aren't going to have enough warm, sunny days to dry it out enough to put in the chickenhouse. I can still use it for compost, mulch and whatnot, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to scrape up enough dry sawdust to last all winter, and the lumbermills are probably shut down for the season (plus, until I move the old sawdust, I have nowhere to put new). If I do run out, I can always fall back on something else -- I can buy wood chips or straw, it's not like there aren't other options -- but I'm a little annoyed with myself for not figuring this out when there was time to do something about it.
... not too annoyed, though, because as minor inconveniences go, it wasn't much of a thing. It was a beautiful day, and I finally remembered to check my box of green tomatoes and found that quite a few of them had ripened up nicely (including some of the black ones, which are awesome looking; image-search for "black tomato" and you'll see what I mean). And I checked a bunch of stuff off my "to do" list.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/381889.html with
comments.