Baler Twine

I just finsished my last night check of the horses - feeding one last flake of hay and picking up the stalls, etc. Once again, I marvel at the number of baler twine strings that have accumulated on the hook we use to hold them once we pull them from the bales. 28 already, in just four days. I'm constantly saying that these pesky strings need to be recycled. I know we all try to use them around our farms for things like tying down tarps . . . but maybe we should all start a letter writing or email campaign to the the companies that make baler twine to recycle it. Out of curiousity I searched the Internet and say a few reuses of the stuff. The best was using it to make a hay net. This sounds like a possible winter project. Since I'm not very good at knitting, maybe I could make baler twine hay bags? I'll keep you posted on how this goes . . .

What is the carbon hoofprint for your horse?

As I'm working on the fall 2010 issue of Green Horsekeeping I did some figuring on how much waste (and this is just on basic horse care and feeding) each of my horses make. While when I look at the totals for just one horse - it doesn't seem so bad, when I times it by 3 (the number of horses we have) the impact is quite large. The average horse discards about 50 pounds of manure a day - when you times this by 365 you get 18,250 pounds per year. Then, when I times that by three I get a staggering 54,750 pounds of manure!!! For the fall issue I also tabulate baler twine used, shoes, bedding and feed bags. Wait till I tabulate show supplies, etc.

By the way, it hasn't rained yet. This may start out as a very dry spring . . .

Mother Nature & Stustainable Horsekeeping

Once again, I'm remined that Mother Nature still rules when it comes to green or sustainable horskeeping. We've had an unseasonable warm March here in the Midwest . . . It gave me a chance to geta jump on cleaning up pastures and hay fields and speading manure and other organic matter. I've really thought that I was being green savvy and was getting a leg up on things, afterall, in the past two weeks it was supposed to rain several times. Guess what? it hasn't. So my dreams of getting that great natural fertilizer out there and having some ground soaking rains to help break the matter down into the soil all went south. My visions of nice lush green sprouts have faded . . .and I can't believe I'm already complaining that it's too dry out. Maybe April will come in light a lion? Isn't that how the saying goes . . .