Earth Day

I'm not trying to make mountains out of molehills.  Quite the opposite.  I'm trying to fill in the Grand Canyon.  The earthen floor in the milking room used to be level, or at least reasonably so.  After years of subterranean excavation and collapse, the floor has a decided slope.  Despite my best efforts, the milking stand sits on a slant and the situation has reached a critical point.  Nothing for it but to import more dirt.  Our local dirt is decomposed granite and there is only a brief window of time when it can be easily worked.  This is going to be a slow process, as that window isn't open right now.  Nothing but powder on the surface, concrete hard two inches below in the summer and slurry mud when the rains come.  It is all I can do to dig enough to fill a five-gallon bucket, and one bucket of dirt a day is about all I can carry in.  (I carry two buckets of poop out.)  I'm concentrating on getting the stand level now.  I'll worry about evening out the rest of the floor later.

Earle came yesterday and moved a mountain.  He had the easy job.  Pellets of goat poop weigh little when dry, and he shoveled a small pickup load in about forty minutes.

They say determination can move heaven and earth.  I don't know about heaven, but I'm doing my best to move earth.