Thursday, February 26, 2009

My new pitchfork!


Hooooooo - eeee! When you live rurally you get excited 'bout different things.

I've wanted a pitchfork for awhile but it's one of those things you would like to have when you need it and all the other times you sorta forget about needing it?

For some reason, I remembered I wanted a pitchfork the last time we were in JAX Farm and Ranch and we headed over to the pitchfork wall. Yes, there was a whole WALL full o' pitchforks. Some had 3 prongs, some had 4 prongs, others had a whole lota prongs. There were short and long handled pitchforks. Heavy pitchforks and lightwight pitchforks.

I chose the 4 prong, long handled fork and we happily brought it home. It leaned against the hay shed and each morning and evening when we fed the horses and goats, I'd look over to see our shiney, new farm tool.

When we get moisture, the hay spilling from the feeders in the goat pens gets matted down trapping manure, urine, hay chaff, straw etc. and that is a breeding ground for bacteria or nasty bugs. Our normal plastic horse manure forks can't really get through that matted, wet, layer of muck without breaking fork tines.

When we first moved out here we had to borrow all sorts of stuff... post hole diggers, heavy duty tin snips, chain saw, pick axe, harrow... but we began accumulating tools bit by bit. I used to run up the road and borrow a neighbor's pitchfork to get that matted muck picked up. And now I can proudly say we've added a pitchfork to our little tool collection.

Last night I had some extra energy to burn and Furry Husband was finishing up some work on his laptop so I went out to play with my new pitchfork. I had noticed a couple spots in the goat pen that were sorta mushy where they like to pee... hay and straw were getting tamped down into the mushy spots. PERFECT opportunity to bust out my new pitchfork.

I disappeared outside.

Furry Husband came out after about 30 minutes... "Uh - honey? Are you o.k.? Where'd you go?.... What are you doing out here in the dark?" his voice full of worry....

"I'm cleaning the goat pen!"

Geez - duh! Yeah - cuz everyone goes out to clean goat pens in the dark... don't they?


4 comments:

Nikki said...

I feel the same way about wanting a wheel barrel. I have to use trash cans to clean out my chicken pen! I woud love one some time soon. Maybe an anniversary gift lol! Cute post

Shanster said...

Oh yeah! I remember when we got our nice Rubbermaid 2 wheeled cart... cut down on time spent doing chores BIG TIME. I hope you get a good wheel barrow soon!

Kelley said...

It really is the simple things in life. A good pich fork... a good wheel barrow..... and some nice healthy work to make it all feel just right (even if it's in the dark... HA!HA!HA!).

Shanster said...

What is that saying about any job is easy with the right tool or all it takes is the right tool? I dunno. Sumthin' like that... :)