The first rule of gardening is to NEVER use fresh manure on a garden. It will burn the plants. I am hoping you used fully composted horse manure. If that is true, it's not a problem, and good for vegetables. The problem with the wood shavings is that it takes a lot of nitrogen to break them down, and may leave the compost nitrogen depleted. This is not a problem as long as you add a good source of nitrogen to your garden. Blood Meal is pure nitrogen that can be worked into the soil, and watered in. That should solve a low nitrogen issue. As for the weeds, well yes, horse manure may have a lot of weed seeds if the animal grazes. Composting the manure helps some, but many piles do not get hot enough to kill all weed seeds. What I would do is put down a good mulch, to prevent the sun from hitting the soil directly. No sun = no weed seed germination. I would suggest checking out Gardener's Supply Company. They have a lot of both fabric and paper mulching sheets. I have successfully used the paper sheets in a vegetable garden. You can walk on them, they will stop weeds, and it just composts away at the end of the season. Or perhaps the paper mulch found there will give you an idea of where to get a similar product locally. Some people use newspaper, but I've found that in order to pile it on thick enough to stop weeds, it's also thick enough to interfere with watering. Check it out. Mulch won't prevent all weeds, but it really helps.

Unless the material is surrounded by anti-freeze or alcohol, anything that has moisture in it will freeze. Once temperatures go down to below 40ºF, composting action stops and only resumes when temperature rebound in the spring. Some compost piles, deep in their recesses, have temperatures still in the warm stage, and might suggest it is doing something.....but its not. It does appear though your barrel has sufficient method to be able to be MT'd of some of its contents. Usually its difficult to remove some of the good stuff with a spade because of no-room to manoeuvre it. Fresh manure should not be put into your compost that is going to be used for general use....and definitely not for use in a vegetable garden. Fresh is too hot and will burn roots. Better it sit for a time...a year...two years, by itself before being thrown into the compost. I know, some will say differently. But, if you're going to put fresh manure into your vegetable garden, be sure to inform your guests from what their potatoes and squash comes from. Any added manure that is toward freshness will add much nitrogen....,many vegetables resent such nitrogen and perform poorly. Same with the added chewed up leaves and grass clippings. Pumpkins do very well when given some manure that is not yet composted fully.

got it :-) Lucy

Thanks y'all! Last night I noticed the border in the bathroom is not sticking on. LOL! If you could have seen me hanging that thing you would have laughed your butts off. The bathroom border was the first one I did and needless to say it looks like crap. Not to mention the fact that my pencil line did not get covered up and I thought it would just wash off. NOPE! The moment water it is smudged. SOOO this week we are pulling it off and repainting the upper wall and putting the border back up. I was thinking of painting the upper wall a very light blue??? What you y'all think? the white seems so stark. They ended up painting her whole bathroom the ceiling bright white. He said I told him to do that. HMMM???? I guess I could see myself doing something stupid like that! Off to go clean windows today! Kel