Farmer Cathy

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunshiney day here in the often damp Pacific NW.  My lesson cancelled, so I could have gone riding.  But, seeing how nice the weather was and knowing that the growing season will be starting soon, I decided to be a good farm owner and do tractor work.

We compost all our stall leavings and paddock pickings and that turns into lovely, black, crumbly compost.  But, it doesn't do all that much good piled up in the manure pile.

So, my trusty Kubota and I spent 4 or 5 hours moving dirt around. 

This doesn't really give you the idea of how lovely and black the compost is.  This is one of our grass paddocks, that does double duty as an outdoor arena.  We bought the property back in 2003? I think, and at that time it was scrub alder with hardly any grass.  Years of adding compost, pulling alders, fertilizing and yes, outright coddling, have produced a lovely, springy grass paddock that can withstand a lot of traffic.

For those of you on the west (or wet) side of the Cascades, you can appreciate what keeping grass paddocks take.  If you turn horses out on them year round, they end up being dirt and mud paddocks.  But, on the other hand, when the grass is growing, it really, really grows.  I'm usually out there mowing 2 or 3 times a week, even with horses on it daily during the spring and summer.  In the winter though, they just look at it longingly.

Here is another photo of my compost spreading.  I tried to get as even coverage as possible, but we'll see how it works out in a few weeks when the grass starts growing.