Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Sneak attack chores

There are bigger projects on the farm that we will set aside days or parts of days to accomplish. This would include any building or repairs. It also includes things like cleaning out the hay tent, things that will take some time to accomplish. For these projects I prepare ahead of time and set aside the time.

But more often I have sneak attack projects. It starts out as me doing my regular chores. For example this afternoon I fed the alpacas and started my usual poop scooping routine. But, I decided I better get that poop in the older girl's shelter. It's good farming to clean up the poop, and especially important to avoid issues with parasites. I typically scoop poop every day to keep our areas safe and clean.  However, the girl's shelter I hadn't been getting on a regular basis.  I had a bad feeling that I was making a bit mistake by not cleaning this. What I should have done is planned out a time for this project, but for some reason, I went in there with my wheel barrow during this afternoons chores. In my head I was thinking I could do a load (a wheel barrow full) from the shelter, then clean up my regular areas. Oh how wrong I could be. Just like has happened to me in the past, I start with one load and it ends up being 4 or 5 or more! Before I know it this is no longer a quick extra 10 minute chore, but now an hours worth of work. But the good news is that I not only cleaned up the poop, but I got all the old hay out of there too. One chore done and I didn't even have to set aside another day. It's done.

Now I need to make sure to make cleaning this area part of my usual daily routine. I am quite concerned that with our mild winter, we could have increased issues with parasites. It's especially important to keep things cleaned up.

1 comment:

Kathryn Ray said...

It's so easy to loose track of time when you're out with the animals, isn't it.

We scoop poo (dog and alpaca) every day unless it's frozen to the ground. The day after it's frozen to the ground always seems like so much more work. ;-)

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