Scavenging sunflower seeds

What kind of person gathers dirty sunflower seeds off the highway and puts them in her used Cadillac?

Yesterday morning was the third time I have had my trunk full of sun seeds. I shoveled them off the highway, again. But this time I wondered what it said about me.

Please excuse me while I try to get my cat to stop eating a blanket.

Anyway, back to the sun seeds. I don't care. They were there, and I took them.

End of story. Well, not really.

The second time I rescued sun seeds, I couldn't find enough buckets. So I did what any chicken owner with a corn stove would reasonably do. I stole my husband's corn hauling buckets. I say they're his buckets because it is his job to haul corn. I only do that if I have to. I'm the mom. I have other things to do, although not necessarily better things. Things like cleaning squash off the kitchen ceiling.

What is with this cat?

Hoping the pile of seeds would still be where I saw it, and planning to pick more up the following morning... I informed my husband he would be unable to fill all of his buckets with corn, as is his evening ritual. Obviously, I needed to use them.

He was not amused.

He found me a different bucket, a bigger one. If I did not have the car that I do have, it would not have fit in the trunk.

I was pleased. This should work.

When I got to the magic sunflower seed spot on the highway, the BIG pile was gone. Bummer, but there was enough of the small pile remaining that it was worth stopping. So I shoveled seeds into my 5 gallon bucket, which I then poured into the BIG pail in my trunk. I did this three or four times. I had a lot of seeds in there.


Only after I got home did I realize I would have to lift that big thing out of my trunk.

I figured I might as well try, being as I am a farmer and can take care of myself. I have chickens, does that make me a rancher?

Seriously, this cat will not stop nibbling on this blanket. Does it mean she has some sort of vitamin deficiency... or simply dementia?

After first checking to be sure I had no eggs in my pocket, I managed to hoist a zillion sunflower seeds out of my trunk. There, the hard part is done right?

It wasn't the weight so much as the awkward size that was the problem.

I waddled like a duck half-way to the barn. Then I put it down so I could think. Guess what? It slid like a dream across the snow! I pulled that bucket the rest of the way to the barn, and reasonably fast too.

I left a very interesting track in the snow.

Very pleased with myself, standing just outside the barn, I realized there was another problem. The barn door wasn't open wide enough to fit the bucket through, and the barn door is frozen in place for most of the winter.

One of my roosters was growling and I felt like doing the same.

I made it this far so I tried sliding the door. Wow, if only my life was this easy every day. I moved it a little, and a little more, and just a bit more. All that was left was to swing the huge unwieldy bucket up onto the dog house.

Victory was mine!

Was it worth it?

I don't know.

What else would I do to entertain myself in the middle of January?

Right now, I have two things to do. The type of things that do not fall into the category of entertainment, but more like whatever cleaning squash from the ceiling would be categorized as. I must go vacuum the remaining sunflower seeds from my Cadillac trunk, and clean the cat puke off my bed.

I knew eating a blanket was a bad idea.