We purchase hay from a local farmer to use as indoor bedding for our 109 ducks. We expect to harvest our own pasture cuttings the near future. Spent bedding from the females' indoor pen is now ferried out through a barn window into this awaiting electric Club Cart which we bought used a good five years ago (believe it or not, it came from an old Trump golf course, and still has the Trump logo on the top!!). At the end of each day, we transport the wet, manure-soaked hay to the base of a tree in our orchard, following holistic orchardist Michael Phillips' recommendation to maintain piles of materials in various stages of decomposition near perennial trees--in this case you see cherries, goumi, siberian peashrub, seaberry, honeyberry, and nanking cherry, amongst others. So right from the duck-mucking into the orchard to feed the plants, mulch the dripline, and to create a slow release of nutrients to the trees. A nice way to integrate sanctuary bedding with the perennial food system. Other bedding is stacked in large windrows, and machine-turned for compost.
An old Trump club cart moving duck poop into the permaculture orchard!!
Tart cherries, autumn olive, siberian peashrub, seaberry, honeyberry, korean bush cherry, willow
The ducks will venture into the orchard to browse on greens and trample the grasses. Mulch piles help younger shrubs and trees out-compete the grasses. Non-uniform/polyculture plantings like this mimic forest overstory and understory. Plum, goumi, seaberry, cherry princepia, hazelnut, comfrey, elderberry.