Hi Clarissa,
An idea might be to put up a hot wire about butt high to a draft horse. You can get the solar powered ones so it won’t cost anything to operate and you can make it fairly unobtrusive if you put a decorative brick in the wall just above the wire to hide it. You can get the short insulators, nail them straight into the pc wall. It’ll keep your horses off the wall, just don’t be standing in front of them the first time they hit the wire. RRRRROCKETHORSE!!!
<< Manure dries to a fine and compactable powder. That would make a great wall this year but most years, the water table here is just a little bit more than 2' so I'm thinking that, as available as it is, I'd better stick to the sand.
I’m not understanding why you can’t use the manure in your bags. If you add just a bit of cement (like 10/1) to the sand & manure mix, pack your bags, stack a row then spray them with water seems like it’d make the cement set up and your bags would be more stable than without the cement and lighter than with straight sand. I don’t think I’d use the bags with manure in them on the bottom course or two but if you’re going to stucco the wall and cover/protect the bags I don’t see why you couldn’t use the manure in the mix… but I dunno. Maybe I’m missing something?
<< I've dug 6" below the ground level; drove rebar into the ground to make an outline then double layered thick plastic sheeting that I also have alot of in the trough and overhanging the edges alot. This gives the bags protection from the sun while I'm building and I can cut off the excess when I'm ready to cement the wall.
I’m really no expert and don’t know a lot about building…..but it seems to me that if you put plastic in the bottom of a trough, fill it with bags then stucco/cement the sides, what keeps the stucco/cement from cracking and letting that plastic-lined ditch fill up with water? If it ever got water in it there’d be no way for the water to drain or dry would there? Or maybe I’m not picturing what you’re doing.
Horse manure *will* burn. It makes a beautiful and unusual Raku ceramic glaze. ;) However, you can add minerals like Boron to the mix to make it a lot more fire resistant.
To be off-subject a bit…and sorry if I’m butting in and telling you something you already know…. but if you apply horse manure straight to the ground without composting it, it will burn anything growing under & around it. However, if you’ll let red worms compost it, it makes “gardener’s gold” or you can compost it in a regular compost pile and it’ll help with your sandy soil and drought conditions more than anything else you could do except maybe pray for rain. ;) If you’re interested, let me know off-list and I’ll send you some info and links.
Good luck!
Pat
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