The old red barn

When I was a kid, we kept a horse in this barn, an appaloosa. I’d go out early in the morning on a winter day to bring her a coffee can of sweetfeed, a flat of hay, and a red bucket of water that had to be awkwardly lugged from the tap in our cellar. When I mucked out her stall, I’d fill a wheelbarrow with manure to toss into the compost pile, a heap that grew so warm that snakes loved to curl up there on cool spring days.