Staying prepared

Are you ready for even a small power outage, let alone a disaster? The idea came to me tonight while changing batteries in a flash light tonight. We always as few laying around, but I do not keep uo with it very well, and it's always at the worst time. In this day and age and the way things are going you HAVE to have a plan. Here are just a few things I thought of tonight and I think I have another app idea ahead of me.

My Crazy Lawn Fertilizer Discovery

I have been doing a lot of reading about lawn care, gardening, and so forth.  We have 4 sheep, 5 chickens, and 4 rabbits, I don't have to tell you that's a lot to clean up after!  It turns out that all the "cleaning" is some very valuable fertilizer.  The chicken poop is considered "hot" so it has to be set aside and composted for several months, I learned that the hard way when I transplanted some flowers and shrubs.

My latest venture was what to do with the rabbit mess.  I have started to take the left over hay and rabbit droppings and collecting them into a trashcan and when the can is full I have been shaking it over a particular section of yard.  I do this before I mow and just mulch everything together.  This has yielded some very awesome results!  This section of lawn grows as much in 3 days as the rest of the yard does in a week.  The weeds and clover are being chocked out by the grass and it as green as I could ever hope it to be.

I have also started taking the leftover hay scraps and collecting them, the molding stuff works the best and spreading those around and mulching them into the yard.  I have some spots where the ground is a bit more rocky and the soil not so great, and the additional organic matter helps keep the water in andd provide a layer of thatch that would not be there.

I quit bagging and I'm exclusively mulching until just before winter sets in.  I have a few bad spots in some areas where the ground is very hard, so I have started to aerate the ground and I'll add some off my rabbit mix to those spots and see if I can replicate the results.  I'll start to take some pictures and make a record of my progress and try to tabulate some kind of structure to it all.

It's spring, turn on the sprinklers and get a weeks worth of rainfall.

So I go to turn on the sprinklers and I open the backflow valve instead of turning the water on, then when I figure it out I got the blackflow pumping water all over the place.  I had to shut the water off all over the property to get everything to drain far enough to find the stupid valve again.  I finally got the mess cleared up and everything working like it is supposed to.  Well it rained all day Sunday and the report says we'll have rain all week.

I'm hoping that I don't drown the lawn, but soaking the ground up real good in a few places will do some good.  I have a bunch patches to replace and some places to thicken up, but the war against weeds will rage for a long time to come.  I got a dang good start on it this year and have some time under my belt fighting these bad boys so I expect good results this time around.  Each season things get a little bit nicer, I have big plans for this one.