Farm improvements – Ayres Works Farm https://ayresworksfarm.com Family Farming and Homesteading in Shade, Ohio Tue, 13 Nov 2018 13:56:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://ayresworksfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/cropped-2019.07-3-32x32.png Farm improvements – Ayres Works Farm https://ayresworksfarm.com 32 32 152252411 Gravel and Sand in the Chicken and Duck Run – Part 1 https://ayresworksfarm.com/gravel-and-sand-in-the-chicken-and-duck-run-part1/ Tue, 13 Nov 2018 13:56:47 +0000 http://ayresworksfarm.com/?p=36 Read more]]> It rains a lot here in southern Ohio. A lot. That keeps the duck and chicken run quite wet and muddy. We finally had enough slipping and sliding around and decided to put gravel and sand down based on some articles that we found online.

Here’s what we were working with:

muddy_pen05 muddy_pen01 muddy_pen04

First things first, we got two scoops of gravel from our local gravel yard and brought it home. Lucky for us, we borrowed a trailer from Amy’s dad in Maryland, but we need to bring it back this week. Now that there’s a deadline…time to get to work!

gravel_load

Two scoops of gravel fit in the trailer before the tires looked like they were ready to collapse. It may not look like a lot of gravel but it is. Trust me. This is the tough part…shoveling it into the wheelbarrow and moving it into the predator proof run.

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Finally, after a couple of hours we see a good bit of progress.

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That’s where we had to leave it for now. We still need at least one more scoop of gravel and a couple of scoops of sand. However, this is a lot easier to walk around on for us and the birds. And because we used river stones we don’t need to worry too much about the ducks feet. Had we used crusher run instead, we’d definitely need to have the sand down ASAP since that’s a lot harder for the duck’s feet.

Thanks for reading along. Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

 

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