Kicking the blahs’ ass

As predicted, a good deal of hard labor and sweat worked wonders beating back the blahs.

Yesterday afternoon, after I was done whining, I hauled my sulky carcass out to the sheep shed and spent the afternoon finally mucking out the rest of the barn. I don’t even know how many wheelbarrows full of crap and rotted straw I carted out, but in the end, I had a nice, clean, compacted dirt floor again. I brought the chickens in with me to hunt grubs.  When I moved the big fan I keep in there for hot days, I discovered a multi-generational mouse family, which the chickens quickly dispatched. Yes, a chicken will swallow a mouse whole. Field mice are pretty small, though. They’re also pretty cute, with those oversized ears, so it was a little sad to watch them get gobbled up, but the chickens made it pretty snappy. And I had only to think of the mouse poop, disease potential, grain thieving, and the exponential consequences of a species with a 20-day gestation, to console myself.

Then the second round of shoveling began!

After much debate and research, I decided it would be crazy not to go ahead and install the Stable-Grid. I had been toying with putting in concrete and using the grid in the barn yard instead, but, all things considered, it seemed a little nuts to blow a couple hundred bucks and several more days of work (particularly when I’ve been mourning my lack of free time) for a dubious payoff.

Here’s what contributed to my decision:

Cost. $200 minimum just in concrete for a DIY job; $900 to hire someone. (Interestingly, adding the floor of the hay shelter–more than doubling the job–would only raise the price around $100, because then it would be worth trucking the concrete in instead of they guy mixing it himself. But either way, I don’t have an extra grand to drop.) Now, if you were starting from scratch, the grid was about the same per sf as DIY concrete, but I already had it on hand (a Christmas gift from my dad), as well as the sand–free leftovers from the ball field next door–and installation required no new tools and no real skill.

Inconvenience. I’d have to cordon off the animals while the concrete cured, pick up all the concrete, lug heavy bags, mix it in the wheelbarrow, etc. etc. If I decided to pony up for the contractor, or even if I could find someone willing to do it for half that, I’d still have to deal with the animals and work around their schedule. And I’ve got ants in my pants and there’s rain scheduled for the whole week.

Uncertainty over whether it’s even the best choice. The main reasons I flirted with concrete were better drainage, ease of cleaning, and reduction of vermin (field mice).  But the barns aren’t exactly mouse-tight, so they’d probably keep eating the food but just relocate their nests under the hay rack or water buckets, or in the hay shelter. And I read lots of arguments in favor of dirt floors on sanitation. With a dirt floor, urine just soaks into the ground, and poop filters down through the top layer of straw and mixes with the older straw to compost. Add the extra level of drainage of the Stable-Grid to keep the excess pee from accumulating, and you’ve got a recipe for some wholesome anerobic activity below and fresh bedding up top. I don’t understand why the ground underneath it all isn’t a horrible ammonia-sick mess, but it’s not. Something about the bacteria in the soil, I imagine. Plus it’s easier on their bodies than concrete, and warmer in the winter.

Time, Energy & Mess. From what I could tell, the Stable-Grid would be pretty quick and easy to install, and a lot easier on my body. I wouldn’t need water, the time or muscle to lift and mix concrete; and there would be no clean-up.

So here’s how it went. I would have photographed the whole process, but my backup camera is sad and I was fighting the falling darkness.

First I closed the gate so the sheep would be out of my hair. After I mucked out the barn, spread out a little gravel I had to even out the really low spots, then dumped in 6 or 7 wheelbarrows of sand. I spread it out with a manure fork and smoothed it with a spade, raising it as close as possible to the level of concrete from some of the posts that had been thrown up from several  years of freezes.

The grid is made of a rigid but not brittle plastic, sort of like the stuff milk crates are made of. Sturdy, but with a little give. The sides have little notches which let you lock them together in a sheet. The sides and bottom crosses anchor it well when you fill it with sand.

It comes in 1.5 x 2′ sheets, so figured out the best orientation for the grid, and started laying it down like tile, working out from a corner and snapping it together as I went. It was very easy to snap together. If you put a board underneath it and stepped lightly on the joints, it popped together securely–but was also easy to snap apart again if you made a mistake. There were a couple of posts I had to work around, so I just cut out sections where required with a hacksaw.

After it was all in place, I brought in another 4 wheelbarrows of sand and spread it out so it filled up all the little honeycomb cells. You don’t have to make your base absolutely level, because the sand sifts down and fills in gaps underneath, so it’s somewhat self-leveling, and flexible enough to handle a light wave, which I had under one particularly high concrete chunk on a post. Once full, it felt very stable and solid, but still comfortable to walk on. I think the grid absorbs impact well. I didn’t quite get finished before a downpour commenced and the sheep began griping enough for me to throw down some straw and let them back in.

This morning, I moved the straw aside and brought in one more wheelbarrow of sand to fill in any gaps I missed last night, and then I spread out the excess to allow for settling. You can see the grid here, before I spread out the last load of sand.

I had to move the straw around while I filled each quadrant, but it was no problem. In fact, the grid makes a nice, level surface that’s easy to scrape or sweep. I expected it to want to catch the manure fork, but that really wasn’t an issue. You can see I overfilled it a bit to allow for settling.

Spread out the straw and voila! Dry and snug as a bug!

The sheep were well pleased to come in out of the rain. Don’t ask me why they’re all Blair Witchy. Maybe they’re stuck up. Maybe they’re too lazy to turn around when they walk into the barn. Maybe they just like staring at the wall.

I also gridded the coop. I ordered the grid based on my memory of the measurements, not the actual measurements. But between underestimating the coop and overestimating the sheep shed, I had an almost perfect count–and an almost perfect fit! There’s a little 8″ gap in the coop, but I just bought a couple of 98¢ concrete pavers to do the job. The coop really doesn’t have the ideal layout. I keep experimenting, but I haven’t come up with a satisfying answer yet. The coop will also get  a nice layer of straw, but I was waiting until I installed those last two pavers.

All in all, I don’t think the whole process took more than 3 hours–less time than it took to muck out both houses. And that’s with wimpy me making a lot of wheelbarrow trips because I could only carry the thing about half-full of sand. If I were stronger or taller, it probably would have been faster–that was definitely the slowest part. I’ll report back next time I muck the barn out, but I’m very pleased with the installation ease of Stable-Grid, and its apparent stability and strength. And after a very soggy 4th of July, I can already see a difference in the dryness of the barn! Hurrah!