It pains me to report this week a troubling development that could adversely affect farm households across Western Canada.
Alarming though the news may be, it is nevertheless reported in the fervent hope that publicity will nip this scourge whilst still in the bud; before this 21st century marketing evolution realizes its potential to change forever the way farm families go about their work.
It’s a development that may pail in comparison to some that western Canadian farm families have encountered, and yet for those engaged in certain pursuits, it’s a change quite beyond the pail in terms of impact.
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Friends of the farm, the news is this: pails of ice cream are being sold without handles.
Indeed, the ubiquitous ice-cream pail, that workhorse of fetch and carry, may soon become nothing more than a flimsy and excessively vertical plastic bowl.
Awkward though it may be to hug four litres of frozen dairy products to the chest, the impact of this change on ice-cream consumption is quite beside the point. It is the looming shortage of pails, and specifically the shortage of pails with handles, that is the crux of the matter.
For as we all know, few farms can function normally without the plastic ice-cream buckets that are pressed into service in roles beyond the mere conveyance of confections. The eggs are gathered in them. The slop is accumulated and the feed is carried in them.
Can berries be adequately picked without them? Likewise peas? Can a kitchen floor be hand-scrubbed without a plastic ice-cream pail full of soapy water at side? Can a grain sample be cleanly delivered from field to moisture tester without them?
What receptacle will serve as well to deliver large numbers of cookies to the bake sale or litres of chili to the freezer?
Those plastic pails are dog dishes, oil pans, milk pails and boat baling equipment. Planters and seedling frost protectors. Canisters and colostrum containers.
Pals of the plastic pail were piqued some years ago when plastic handles replaced the more durable wire models on the buckets. Little did we know then that more nefarious changes were afoot.
In terms of recycling and reusing, few disposable items can match the lofty ranks of the four-litre ice-cream pail. An emptied pail without a handle is merely material for the landfill.
Buddies of the bucket brigade, our choice is clear. To maintain supplies of this vital farmstead tool, we must eat more ice cream this spring and summer. And we must only buy the four-litre pails complete with handles.
I call upon you to brandish your spoons.
