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Tuesday was another day of pushing hard to get more mowing done. I've opted to do lots of it with the walk behind unit so that all the long grass that gets cut also gets bagged. Because it is long and still somewhat wet it means that I had to stop and empty the bag very frequently as well as scrap out the nasty muck on the underside of the blade guard.
Once the 4 ft round bin that I made from some left over pasture fencing was full to the brim and I ran out of big contractor bags - filled a dozen of those - I had to start dumping over the fence into the pasture area. I have enough other material for my compost bins and this stuff is full of weed seeds so out it goes. This makes for very easy eats for the goat and several of the horses who came over and ate lots of it.
Much too tired to fix any dinner so I resorted to a Jimmy Dean breakfast bowl of sausage & egg & potato.
I might get lucky and have just a couple of hours in the morning to get a bit more done before we head in to 2 days and nights of heavy rain. The ground is already saturated and so it's expected that we may have some local flash flooding on a few of the roads.
I still need to load all of those bags of clippings and haul them to the dumpsters and then stop at the station and refill both my 5 gallon gas cans so I'll have fuel for the next round of mowing.
It's far too early to tell just what path TS Chantal will ultimately take or if it will fall apart or strengthen over the next few days but if we get even the edges of it we could have a mess on our hands in this region if more rain is accompanied by wind that takes down trees and power lines.
...Mr. NCN (North Carolina Native) just peaked his head in the door and mentioned to me that maybe we should go to Flagstaff on vacation instead of Santee Cooper, South Carolina because Arizona needs the rain.
Houston TX needs the rain more than Arizona does! We'll pay for youall to come here for a while.
We've had so much rain here that it was not possible to mow and the grass really grew tall very fast.
So today I mowed the front yard with the ride on but then had to rake up all the long cut stuff. The front yard doesn't seem that big but I filled four of the 33 gallon trash bags with what I raked up.
Zugor, get one of those wonderful scythes from the makers in Eastport, Maine. I cannot use it but we got one for DP's birthday and he absolutely loves it, you clean-sweep the tall grass and weeds quickly with the curved blade and then go in with a mower.
We have had nothing (almost nothing) but rain for maybe 10 weeks straight. Even if the day starts out promising, you can bet that by afternoon there will be a downpour - no, deluge. It's so wet and steamy here in New England that we're thinking of petitioning for a new feature on accuweather – the "yuk" index. It's like the PNW only 10 times worse.
Tuesday was another day of pushing hard to get more mowing done. I've opted to do lots of it with the walk behind unit so that all the long grass that gets cut also gets bagged. Because it is long and still somewhat wet it means that I had to stop and empty the bag very frequently as well as scrap out the nasty muck on the underside of the blade guard.
Once the 4 ft round bin that I made from some left over pasture fencing was full to the brim and I ran out of big contractor bags - filled a dozen of those - I had to start dumping over the fence into the pasture area. I have enough other material for my compost bins and this stuff is full of weed seeds so out it goes. This makes for very easy eats for the goat and several of the horses who came over and ate lots of it.
I wish a horse person would chime in. I'm not sure you should be dumping your grass in the pasture.
Grass clippings can be lethal . . . way too rich for a horse's delicate digestive system. Fresh grass clippings, which are typically wet and clump together, will quickly ferment in a horse's gut and can cause colic and possibly laminitis. And if the heat and humidity conditions are right, mold can form quickly and lead to digestive issues, too. Plus horses will gobble them too fast, adding to the "clumping" problem. In my lengthy horse life, I've always been told, by vets and equine nutritionists alike, to never feed grass clippings. There's always the possibility, too, that there might be some toxic weed or plant mixed in. I found Deadly Nightshade (used to make Belladonna) in a field at my new house. Quickly eradicated it, but if it had been mowed first, I never would have known. Better safe than sorry.
Oh, one more thing. Some horses have food sensitivities, just like people. So never assume that all horses can eat the same thing.
Hope this helps. Good luck with keeping up with your mowing!
Boogie'smom and Movinon - Thanks for the reminder. I sort of knew that but since I'm not a horse person I'd forgotten. The horses belong to two different friends who pasture them here. It's not something I normally do but with so much rain the growth has been exceptional and the big round bin that I use was full up and then I ran out of contractor bags and I don't put the weedy lawn stuff in my regular compost bin - I have more than enough stuff from other sources.
Got in some mowing today and the big bin had compacted down by about 2 feet so was able to dump what I got using the walk behind bagging mower in that bin.
Much of what I mower was short enough that it could be left to simply mulch the lawn but in the dog run area which is about 40 x 80 I prefer to have that gathered up so I can pick up the dog poop with greater ease.
I hope that tomorrow I'll have the time and energy to turn my compost bin, it needs it.
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