Beverage menu

There are a variety of beverage options on Bent Barrow Bistro's winter menu.

A) There's icy water in the big half barrel, which gets stirred several times daily and usually has a sort of a slurpee consistency.

B) There's icy water in the little tub, which is low-volume enough to freeze nearly solid on a cold night and which must suffer the removal, by FarmWife, of a large ice slab each morning.

C) There's tepid water in the navy blue five-gallon bucket. This comes from FarmWife's bathtub's "tepid" setting.

D) There's well-temperature wellwater in the gray-blue five-gallon bucket. This comes from the no-freeze hose bib or, if the no-freeze hose bib is frozen, then from FarmWife's bathtub's "cold" setting. The no-freeze hose bib, you may have deduced, is not really what it purports to be.

I like drinking from B, the little tub, which I do until it's empty. Then I go over and drink from A, the big half barrel. I do this gently, using my snout in stirring motions so as to work around the ice. I slurp, pause, slurp, pause, and slurp. Meanwhile, FarmWife stands near buckets C and D saying, "Come try this, Fenny! It's warm and nice! Have a sip!"

Missy likes drinking from bucket C. She'll have a half gallon of warmish water for breakfast and another for dinner in cold weather, which FarmWife loves to see.

B.G. likes to take a sip from C, a sip from D, a sip from C, and a sip from D. I think this is because she knows she can dominate us all with the power of her goat slime. Saliva-infested waters give her dominion over all of the creatures of the paddock.

FarmWife has tried emptying buckets A and B on icy days and filling them, fresh, with water from the house. I stand about until they've frozen, then I make a little hole with my snout, enlarge it with some head-swirls, and drink.

I am practicing for the apocolypse, in-case I ever have to be a wild mule. I'll want to know how to overwinter without an electric water heater.

Bottoms up!

FenBar