farmdoc's blog post number 355

Today I write of buckets. I love them. I don’t exactly know why. Perhaps because their design’s so simple and they so wonderfully perform their purpose. Currently my favourite bucket (pictured) is a 20-litre stainless steel one. It's a beauty. I’ve had it a few years. I’m ashamed to reveal I bought it in a Launceston hardware store owned by Australia’s (and, I think, the world’s) most rapacious woodchipping company. Yes, Gunns Limited. This bucket’s usual location is on the gravel outside my Mole Creek back door. The rainwater it collects there is used to water our native Tasmanian trees in their pots nearby, or to wash my Peugeot. I love that bucket because it’s a bucket, and also because I love stainless steel. Stainless steel is a steel alloy with a minimum 10% chromium content. It doesn’t stain, corrode, or rust as easily as ordinary steel (it ‘stains less’). But it isn’t totally stain-proof. The corrosion resistance of iron-chromium alloys was first recognized in 1821. But back to buckets. I’m enchanted by the fact that only a full bucket can overflow. Extrapolating this fact to human psychology produces what I call ‘the bucket principle’. I’m pleased to say that most of the time my psychological bucket overflows.