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The wheelbarrow

Alison and I turned up at the farm at about six o'clock on a Saturday night.

It wasn't the usual farm where Alison keeps her horses; it was 25 minutes away.

It was a friend's farm, or at least where she keeps her horses, and she was away for the weekend, and Alison had agreed to help (dragging me along).

We got there and started to get the equipment ready to muck out horses, forks, spades, brushes, that kind of stuff and then Alison asked me to go and fetch a wheelbarrow.

And so, I went around the corner, and there was the biggest wheelbarrow I've ever seen.

Initially, I thought, "Wow, that's amazing; that's a monster truck of wheelbarrows", and then I wondered how this would play out.

It's far, far more effective, isn't it, to have the biggest wheelbarrow you can possibly manage. Load it once, transfer it once, tip it out once, and that's it, you're done.

But of course, it's harder to load because it's higher up, and that's less efficient.

It's much harder to carry, slower, and not so steady, and when you get to the other end to a muck heap, and you try to empty it, it's a f*ck*ng nightmare.

I don't think it was any better than having a wheelbarrow half the size; in fact, there are all sorts of better things about having a wheelbarrow half the size.

And so, there I was with my ankles deep in horse sh*t and straw, thinking that bigger really isn't always better and more efficient is often not quite as efficient as you might think.

Perhaps worth thinking about because this is obviously not really about wheelbarrows.

By Colin Campbell on 30/05/23 18:00