Spring Fling

The annual farm sale in Annawan, Illinois was recently held and Brian almost always goes up to see what he can find.  It's a HUGE two day sale and you can find anything from a lawn mower to a hog feeder.  He always boils a few eggs, usually plentiful at this time of year, and takes them along for lunch. They are easy to put in a pocket and their wrapper can go right on the ground.  He might look a little out of place eating his hard boiled eggs while other guys are drinking soda pop and eating hot dogs but he's used to that role.

This year Brian had his eye on a manure spreader.  The livestock on this farm produce a good quantity of bedding and manure which needs to go somewhere.  In the past, our little John Deere 1020 has taken one loader bucket full at a time to the composting area.  The bucket is small enough that it doesn't take long to fill by hand and we make many trips with the tractor back and forth from chicken house to compost pile.  Plus, we do not have a good way to spread manure or finished compost.  All good reasons to look for a manure spreader.

When at any farm sale, Brian is not looking for the latest model, the biggest, nor typically the one with the best paint job.  It's usually a piece of equipment that would have been used on a smaller farm a long time ago.  Well, that is exactly the description of our 'new' manure spreader.  Though we do not have the papers, we're predicting our New Idea manure spreader is somewhere in the 30-40 year old range - about the same year Brian was born.

The spreader made its drive home the day after the sale and was put promptly to work the following morning.  The chicken house needed a thorough cleaning and the spreader helped move that job along.  Each time Brian filled it to capacity, he would back it over to the compost pile, engage the PTO, and empty all that good manure laden bedding into the compost pile.  

Though it is not the newest paint job, it does happen to be my favorite color - orange.