Overall winter is my favorite season. A glowing fire, a hot cup of tea with honey, a page turner book and my favorite alpaca sweater all invoke warm and cozy feelings. Well that is until I became an alpaca farmer. While I do enjoy farm work, I don't enjoy lugging buckets of water through 3 feet of snow. Nor do am I pleased that the gator will not efficiently move around the paddocks and barn without becoming stuck on a snow drift. Basically the gator, my friend and savior, is relegated to the barn until either the snow has melted or there is a crusty, icy top layer enabling the vehicle to cruise effortlessly in and out of paddocks.
Why do I need the gator? It is my hay carrier, poop scooper and back saver. When the gator is parked in the aisle way of the barn I become the main hauler and lugger. As of yet we do not have automatic water feeders in the paddocks. So every morning and evening I am filling up buckets and dragging in them out to each pen. On top of this I need to get hay out to everyone. I found a sled in the garage which I am "cleverly" using to haul 6-8 flakes at a time. I felt this was a flawless option. But as you can see from the pictures it is not.
While these two chores are manageable, the removable of poop is not. There is no way to get a wheel barrow to the piles of dung if I cannot get the gator there. I still have not come up with a suitable solution. If I wait until the snow is hard enough to drive on, I have a huge pile of poop. Aghh. The stuff is too heavy to put onto a sled and drag it to the compost. I just don't know. Perhaps if it would snow again the ground will be covered and everything will clean, white and crisp. Out of sight, out of mind at least until I can come up with a solution!
I like the out of sight, out of mind solution! The only bad thing about this option is the spring thaw revealing all the hidden treasures ; )
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