It was a beautiful day on the Hill this weekend, so Dana and I took advantage of the weather to get out and get some stuff done.
Saturday
On Saturday we finished taking the old chicken coop down. Last weekend we stopped when we had trouble getting the bottom boards out of the ground; this weekend I fired up the tractor and used the bucket to hork the whole works up. Once the boards were out I shoved the whole mess out onto the grass nearby so we could cut the wire off the boards.
Cutting the wire was, literally, a pain. My hands are cut up pretty good by the wire. I really must learn to wear gloves when I'm doing this kind of thing. Dana used a pair of bolt cutters to remove the field fence, then I whacked away with an old axe to remove the chicken wire. Once the wire was done I bundled it up and tossed it onto the pile we made last week.
Once I was done with the coop, Dana suggested that I turn the compost bin with the tractor, as long as it was there. Turning a compost bin would have taken me a week the last time I did it (with a shovel and a wheel barrow). With the tractor it only took about half an hour. I love the composters -- we put weeds and grass clippings and leftovers from the garden in, and then we pull black humus out. It's like magic, only not.
Dana loaded the junk wood into the truck while I turned the compost. When I was done we drove it down to the pasture and tossed it onto the burn pile. That's getting pretty big, I'll need to light it pretty soon, probably late in the spring when it has had time to dry.
Sunday
I wasn't real motivated to go out and work on Sunday, but I wanted to get the rest of the old coop off the place. I loaded up the truck with the wire and hauled it to the solid waste drop-off in Sultan. They let you drop off recyclable material for free, so that's something anyway.
In the afternoon Dana headed out to weed the front gardens. Not sure what she was thinking... She weeded the bed by the front window while I cleaned up the front yard, then we weeded on the mound on the side of the house together. We ran out of time (and energy) so we only did the side facing the house, but it looks a lot better.
When we were walking between the garden and the compost bin with buckets of weeds we noticed that the strawberries in the strawberry jar mostly survived the winter. We're surprised, what with as cold as it was, but pleased -- we won't need to buy as many to restock this year.