January 7, 2007

uckets! One cannot run a farm without 5 gallon buckets. I keep telling the boys not to throw the buckets as they will break. Guess what? We were down to 1 bucket and someone cracked it last night. Maybe they will believe me when I tell them they have to water animals with a 2 quart plastic pitcher. I got the nasty surprise when I went to feed and water the sled dogs this morning and water started spewing out the side of the bucket and down my leg.

I figure a farm needs 5-10 buckets. Buckets are an essential part of a homestead. Not just for hauling water and feed. But when canning, all the produce comes into the house in them. The remains of what you do not need, such as the peels, cores and stuff, get hauled back out in them to the hogs or the compost. I line them with garbage bags to drop my sausage meat into when I am butchering. The list of uses for them is endless. And now I am on the hunt for at least one bucket, if not five.

While I went to go get a picture of the bucket in question, I heard a noise and looked. There was a little red squirrel hanging upside down from the mudroom rafter like Sylvester Stallone on a rock in the movie "Cliffhanger". As a rock climber myself, I can fully respect how the squirrel hangs like that. I did not get a picture of him hanging though. I did ask him to wait while I got my camera, he did, though not in the same spot. After I talked to him for a bit, and tossed him a raw almond which I was having for a snack, he cautiously came down, but to my surprise bounded across the snow in the side yard and onto the top of the root cellar, then back to a spruce tree.