Trenching 101

This spring things are wet, no question about it. Many roads are washed out or flooded over, rivers and streams are over flown already, and there is still a ton of snow to melt. 

This week we are supposed to get temperatures between 5-10 degrees with the weekend getting up to the mid teens. We will see a lot more snow go this week!

Because we are breeding right now, the cows and calves are still in close quarters. Rather then having the water just laying around, we try to drain the pens and dry them out as fast as we can. This is done by creating trenches and water ways.

This was always my favorite part of spring. I can remember spending hours out playing in the mud draining water, seeing how fast and big of a trench you can get.

One of our many trenches

The best trenches always come from tractor tires. We are still feeding hay, so the tractor is being used each day. If you can use one of these tire tracks for the trench it works the best. However, if that is not possible then we use shovels and sticks to create the trenches for the water.

As much as I love this, hopefully it will not last to much longer. Water laying around is just not good for calves, and makes doing chores not fun at all!