Moving manure

I'm trying to do something in the garden every day. Depending on the weather, this might include planting seedlings in the house; but let's face it, there's a lot of hard work to be done before the weather is warm enough to plant anything, and I won't get it done by being lazy.

So I'm trying to do something in the garden every day.

Since I've been using my garden cart a lot, one of the first things that needed to be done was to replace the flimsy plastic liner it came with. Needless to say, it was already full of holes.

So Don dropped the sides and measured the floor.

Then he cut me a sturdy piece of OSB to fit in the bottom of the cart. I loved the way this picture turned out; it so beautifully illustrates my wonderful husband.

He fit the cut board into the cart...

...and made it better than new.

Now I have no excuse to avoid trundling manure. Make that composted manure, from the compost pile. It's hard dirty work moving it, but the tire garden needs it.

Naturally the chickens assume I'm digging up all those lovely worms exclusively for their benefit.

The reason I'm moving so much manure is because the soil in last year's tires has settled, leaving the tires about half-full.

So I'm topping them with fresh compost.

This is after I weed everything, of course.

There are a lot of tires to top off, and I don't even have a fraction of the tires laid out that I want to fill.

How does the song go? Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow...

"Secure steering yoke (K) to front axle support (L)..."

I have a new toy.

I've been bitten by the gardening bug, and since it's far too early to plant anything, I've settled with getting the garden ready for seeds. This means topping every tire with a load of fresh compost, since last year's material settled and some of the tires were only half-full.

The compost is beautiful and friable. The plants will love it.

But this also means trundling endless wheelbarrows of compost the distance between the compost pile and the garden. This year I'll be building "bays" near the garden to start fresh compost piles in a more convenient location; but for the time being I'm stuck with the old compost pile, which is a good 200 feet away. That may not sound like much, but it is when pushing a full load of compost (120 lbs or so) uphill through mud, across the flat, then into the garden.

And I have more hard work ahead of me, because we plan to lay vinyl down on the garden between tires (for weed control and water runoff into the pond) and anchor it with gravel. The gravel will have to get moved wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, and I know from experience that moving gravel by wheelbarrow is VERY HEAVY.

So when Don noticed that Ace Hardware was having a sale on a heavy-duty garden cart, we splurged.

Naturally it came in a box.

Sorry Lydia is blurry. She was a big help, as you can imagine.

Soon Don was buried in instructions of the "Secure steering yoke (K) to front axle support (L)..." variety.

Fortunately my manly man is good at these kinds of things, despite a few omissions from the Chinese-written instruction book.

He even had the obligatory one-part-left-over washer. He says it's a guy thing.

My new toy! Ain't it purty?

The cart comes with a flimsy plastic liner. It's just temporary, though. Don said he'll make me a sturdy liner out of OSB.

But for the time being I thought I was being clever by covering it with a piece of cardboard that came with the cart.

I immediately baptized the cart with a full load of compost. Wow, I was able to fit about three times as much in the cart as I could in the wheelbarrow!

It was still tough to get the cart uphill through the mud of the compost pile, but at least I was pulling instead of pushing, and I was also toting three times as much (meaning, one-third the effort per "unit"). I pulled the cart alongside one of the bigger tires and started unloading. The cart maneuvered easily and didn't "tip" on corners despite the heavy load.

I quickly discovered the cardboard was useless, duh.

The cart allows me to drop one side at a time for easier emptying.

One cart-full of compost allowed me to entirely top off a huge tractor tire. Score! It would have taken two or three trips with the wheelbarrow.

I'm giving this cart a Grade A. It's an excellent addition to our homestead.