A few years ago, DH bought me (at my repeatedly dropped hints) a sports sled for Christmas. The long, wide, flat bottomed type with sidewalls on it that is loved by ice fishers and hunters for carrying gear, game, and what-have-you over ice, snow or also bare ground.
I wanted one for helping with homesteading chores. At the time, that meant toting the chicken waterer from the coop to the basement at night to thaw, and then back from the basement to the coop the next morning so the chickens would have water to drink all day. Much easier to sled it than try to carry it by hand over icy ground, through knee deep snowdrifts and whatever else the winter weather threw at me.
But I was also looking ahead to the future, when I would finally have horses at home. Because one of those big heavy duty sleds is perfect for taking a bale of hay from the barn, out to the pastures for horse lunch time.
That is what I'm loving it for currently: carrying hay into the pastures so I don't have to tote flakes by hand and deal with wind, gate latches, and questionable footing while trying not to drop my stack of hay flakes or get chaff in my eyes. Just toss the appropriate amount of hay into the sled, sled it through the pasture gates, and disperse the applicable number of flakes into each pasture. So easy.
It also comes in handy for toting water buckets to and from the pastures daily when the weather is too cold to maintain liquid water in the troughs, and is what I used last winter to take frozen water buckets from the barn to the basement for thawing. Thankfully I now have a heated tack room to stow those icy buckets in as needed.
As an added bonus, if DH and I get a wild hair and want to do some high speed sledding, either of us can fit comfortably in the sled while the other pulls it around with the 4-wheeler. Although it doesn't take corners well at high speed. Ask me how I know. 😂
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