the three bucket campaign

You know it isn't much, three buckets.  Three five gallon buckets.  I mean, I bring buckets home all the time.  People look at me funny.  My family looks at me funny.  We have a place on the farm we call "bucket town". 

"What in the world do you use all those buckets for?"  A lot of things.  We put eggshells in them, and ashes.  We can take those to the garden or where ever they need to go.  We have a bucket of gloves, a bucket of hats, a bucket of scarves.  Several buckets of fencing paraphernalia.  Tools.  Chicken manure.  More tools.  Small dry wood to help ret up the fires.  And probably many other things.  They are rather ubiquitous here.  Because they are free and useful and I rescue and scavenge and hoard such as that.

If you need a bucket, I can probably spare you one or two.

And there is a road.  You might not know it but roads are alive.  Creeks are alive.  Roads and creeks are made to change.  Stability is not static.  Water says hahahahaha and with roads and creeks and lots of other things there is always water (and that is a good thing -- just ask California, or see this blog during the drought when we were still hauling water in December just to wash dishes) and there is no point in getting mad and there is nothing to fight (and if you think you are ever going to get the upper hand on water, you have delusions of grandeur) so you might as well enjoy.  We've spent some family days working on the road this year, hauling some rocks, widening some ditching, hauling some more rocks.  In a lot of ways, it is really not too bad now.  At least I remember the last time we went on a "three bucket campaign" it was worse in that someone actually said, "Those aren't ruts; those are canyons."  There aren't any canyons.  At least not since the first major rock hauling day. 

But there are some soft spots, some holes, some places that need to be built up, places where water needs to be persuaded in a different direction, tree roots that need back underground.  And that is where the three bucket campaign comes in.  We drive past shale banks every time we go out.  Take three buckets, a shovel, 10 minutes tops, and most every trip in, bring three buckets of shale and put them somewhere needful on the road.  It is amazing how quickly just that makes a huge difference.   HUGE.  Combine that with periodic family days hauling more rocks, building better water bumps, and wow, driving up becomes much less of a challenge.  Even in weather.

Better road.  Decent workouts.  Mindfulness.  Faithfulness.

But still don't visit without calling first.