When Good Enough will do

I was at the local farm store a few days ago & did some window-shopping while waiting for my grain order.  Ooooo, saw a nice shiny grain scoop.  Picked it up & then put it down as soon as I saw the price; $14.95.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice looking galvanized scoop with a large capacity, rolled rim edges & handle.  I guess I’m just too cheap. 

Here’s our grain scoop:

And I have about six million of them. 

I also like to keep these two “dollar items” right by each water bucket for ease of access: 

Is it a top-quality brush?  Of course not - it only cost a buck.  But I get my dollar’s worth out of it and I can toss them before they get too “icky” or beyond the point of being able to clean them off.  Yep, you just saw a part of my rampant consumerism in action.   

I have to keep brushes and scoops up & away from the goats or they will take them and hide them on me.  Keeping the scrub brush right by the water bucket also gives me a visual reminder to scrub them out.  Now I can scrub it out every other day without searching for the brush or going into the barn or house for one (and either getting distracted or entirely forgetting about it).

The kitty litter scoop is for skimming ice out of the buckets in the winter.  I use the one in the mule barn all year; scooping ice in the winter & straw / hay all through the year.

And here’s our fancy water transporter:

Empty Kitty-Litter container

Since we don’t have water to the barn or the garden I’ve been using these to haul water.  Not too heavy and I can easily carry two of them with the handy-dandy handles.

We also use empty popcorn tins for mouse-proof storage of goat mineral and chicken grit.  If you haven’t been the recipient of a tin of popcorn this past holiday season I’m sure that you can find one from a friend or at your local thrift store.

I was just gifted a box of home-improvement magazines by a friend of mine.  I love looking through them for decorating ideas.  While flipping through the pages today, I saw an ad for an under-the-counter composting bin (this was the inspiration for tonight’s post).  It was a stainless steel bucket about 8” across with a matching lid.  Was it cool?  Sure was.  Was I going to spend $300 for a metal bucket and lid?  Come on……three hundred dollars??  Heak no.  And even if I wanted a composting bin like that, it could be done much cheaper.  Besides, we have this one:

And guess what?  It’s good enough.  Actually, it's great.  It has a tight-fitting lid, an indention in the pail for easy grabbing and washes up nicely.

Hillbilly-esque?  Yup.  But cheap – or free – and environmentally saavy is better than “good enough” in my book.