afternoon chores

This is the last of the "chores trilogy" posts. I already posted about my morning chores routine, and about The Map Man's evening chores routine. This post will talk about the afternoon chores that the kids and I undertake. With one disclaimer -- for the most part it's ME doing the chores, with the kids joining in as they feel like it, or running around the barnyard (as pictured), fields, and woods if they'd prefer (and usually that is what they prefer). I don't require that the kids help me with chores at this point, but they often choose to give me a hand anyway. As they get older, they'll be taking more responsibility for these sorts of things.

To start with, I feed the ponies and set the sheep out to graze in one of the fields. They spend most of the day in their main pasture, but we have pens and yards that need "mowing" to keep the grass under control, which has the added benefit of feeding the sheep, and fertilizing the fields too (as they distribute their manure). As you can see from the photo, they are happy to oblige with their mowing and fertilizing chore.

One of the chores the kids like to participate in is collecting the eggs -- here J chats with a broody hen (hunkered down in the nest box to the right of his hand) while he collectes an egg from the nest box next to her. Broody hens think they are incubating eggs, so they stop laying and become fairly aggressive. The kids have strict instructions not to check under them for eggs or get close enough for them to get pecked. Not that the birds can do all that much damage, but it does smart when they get you. While J collects the eggs, I feed the chickens and the ducks.

On this particular day, Zoo Boy decides to give me a hand with "manure management". This is the most time consuming and labor intensive part of the daily chores, as we remove horse manure from the pony pasture and paddock, and muck out their run-in stall in the barn, replacing soiled bedding with fresh shavings. By the time we're done and ready to head to the bottom of the pasture and the manure pile, the wheelbarrow is full and too heavy for the kids to move by themselves. (I'll have to wait a few more years for that sort of help!)

After dumping off our load at the manure pile, J gives me a hand pushing the wheelbarrow back up the hill. (Although he actually abandoned it shortly after I took this picture in favor of chasing those chickens at the back of the picture.)

That pretty much wraps up our daily chores. We do have special weekend chores -- for example, both of the ponies get a thorough grooming on Saturday mornings (in addition to quick hygeine attention during the week), and the chicken coop and duck house are cleaned out on Saturdays as well. There are also seasonal chores that are only done occassionally (cleaning out the sheep shed, trimming sheep feet, vaccinating animals, spreading mulch and manure, etc), which are attended to on the weekends as well if there is a need.