🍬 Lyra ate too many sugar cubes over the weekend and now has a week of #physicalTherapy #PT for short-term #laminitis 🙃
Why must we fall in #love? 🍬

Here’s what the icing boots we used look like. They were relatively cheap, worked pretty well if you change the ice frequently, and greatly helped with keeping the foot cushions in place without all the tape. Recommended if you have a laminitis #horse. #laminitis.

Last post tonight.
I don’t have the typical big-flat-rectangle #garden. Beds do a great job with most plants, but I want to grow some sprawlers too - winter squash, summer squash, maybe a melon? So I’m thinking of spots where I can enrich the soil. I put some purple blobs in this photo to indicate places that might work.
The soil on my property, under the lawns, is not very fertile. It rains a lot here so the minerals get washed out of the soil. It’s generally fine silty stuff, but I know there’s a nasty clay bed a foot underground over by the strawberries. The whole area is very compacted and a lot of the green lawn is actually a scum of moss on hard pan.
I want to fix the soil. I want to fix *all* my soil, have it nourish all kinds of life here! And this is the next task: fixing some soil for sprawling summer plants.
I worked massive amounts of compost into the strawberry patch, and it’s coming along. I think I’ll just do the same for the purple marked spots - dig a big ass hole for the adult root system. Fill it with something like five parts original soil, five parts rough compost, and two parts perlite. Then I’ll leave them alone until warm-soil summer.
If the chickens are too destructive, I’ll cover the spots with a little chunk of chicken wire. I’d like to do the same with some spots for sunflowers and marigolds. For some reason I’ve grown an entire flat of marigolds.
It’s very chaotic. My adhd brain loves it. My autistic brain is delighted with this giant puzzle: how to #Regenerate my land by using my animals and working with the environment.
The meadow is in similar bad shape. The two lower spots have lush grass, but the two ridges have terrible, washed-out soil that barely supports scrubs and weeds. I want to regenerate that soil to make a proper meadow for my equines, even though their grazing will be very limited. They’ve both developed insulin resistance and they’ll only be able to graze at certain hours on certain days. Happy to post more about #laminitis if y’all want to hear.
The meadow needs a lot of organics to start with. I’m using a lot of my excess compost to cover a sort of hugelkultur terrace I’m making in the back, and after that ugliness is masked I’m going to spread excess compost in the meadow. Not sure what kind of grass and browse i want out there, and not sure how to make it happen, even on a little one acre meadow. I’ll figure it out as I go!