In a small valley, threaded by a cheerful, babbling brook, lived two inseparable friends. They were Boro, a clever beaver with strong teeth and an even stronger will, and a squirrel named Eliza, who was as fast as lightning and had eyes everywhere. Their days were full of games and discoveries, but one day, a tremendous worry befell them.
“Look, Boro! A whole pile!” exclaimed Eliza, pointing to a mound of golden grains of wheat she had gathered from a nearby field. “We’ll have food for the whole winter.”
Boro took a single grain and tried to bite through it. Crunch! It was as hard as a pebble. “Ouch, my teeth!” he complained. “Eliza, this is a wonderful find, but how are we going to eat it? It’s far too hard.”
Eliza sighed. He was right. They tried soaking the grains in water, but they only swelled up and remained tough. They tried to break them with a small stone, but the grains rolled away in all directions, and after an hour of work, they only had a small handful of grit.
“This isn’t working,” Boro frowned, wiping his sweaty brow. He was frustrated. They had a pantry full of food, but they were hungry. “There must be a better way. A faster and simpler one.”
They sat on the bank of the brook and stared sadly into the water. The current was strong, carrying leaves and small twigs along with it. One leaf got caught on a rock, fluttered there for a moment, and then the force of the water tore it free and carried it on.
“Look at that,” Eliza whispered. “That water has such power. It moves everything that stands in its way.”
A little spark lit up in Boro’s mind. “What if…” he began slowly, his eyes fixed on the current. “What if the water could help us? What if we could somehow harness its power?”
Eliza looked at him, confused. “Catch the water? How are you going to catch a brook, Boro? We don’t have a bucket that big.”
Boro laughed. “Not like that! We don’t have to catch all of it. Just its movement.” He took a long branch and stuck it into the water. The current immediately hit it and tried to turn it. Boro could barely hold on to it. “Do you feel that? The power! If we attached some… paddles to this branch, the water would spin it all by itself!”
Eliza jumped up excitedly. “Like a wheel! It spins and spins!”
“Exactly!” Boro exclaimed. “We’ll build a big wheel with paddles. The water will push against them, and the whole wheel will turn.”
They got to work right away. Boro, with his strong teeth, gnawed thick branches and prepared them for the construction. Eliza, with her deft little paws, gathered strong vines and pieces of bark for the paddles. It was hard work. Their first attempt failed. The wheel was too heavy, and the water couldn’t even move it.
“Never mind!” Boro said with determination, though he was tired. “Now we know it needs to be lighter. We’ll try again!”
The second attempt was better. The wheel turned slowly, but it was crooked and fell apart after a short while.
“It didn’t work?” asked Jacob, a wise badger who had been watching them for a while from his sett. “Excellent! You’ve discovered that all the parts must be the same size and firmly connected. That is a very important discovery.”
His words encouraged them. And so they tried for a third time. This time, they measured everything carefully. Boro made sure all the paddles were the same, and Eliza tied them on tightly. Together, they then lowered the large wheel into the narrowest part of the brook, where the current was strongest.
And it happened! The water hit the first paddle. Splash! The wheel moved. Then the second one. Splash! The movement grew faster. And then the third, the fourth, the fifth… The wheel began to spin in a smooth, rhythmic dance with the water. It whirled around and around, fast and without stopping.
“We did it!” they shouted with joy, dancing on the bank.
Jacob the badger nodded in approval. “Well done. You have harnessed the power of the water. But what now? How will a spinning wheel help you with the grain?”
Boro and Eliza fell silent. They hadn't thought of that. They had a beautiful, working wheel that was spinning, but the grains were still hard. They sat down and began to think. The wheel was turning. At its center was a thick branch, which spun along with it.
“That central branch…” Boro mused. “It’s moving too. It’s spinning just as fast as the whole wheel.”
“And what if we extend it all the way here, to the bank?” Eliza suggested, pointing to a flat spot beside the brook.
“And attach a stone to the end of it!” Boro added. “A flat, round stone. When the branch turns, the stone will turn too!”
It was a brilliant idea. They found one large, flat stone lying on the bank, and Boro hollowed out a hole in its center. Then they found a second, even larger stone to remain stationary beneath it. With their combined strength, they pushed the upper, rotating stone into place. The whole contraption looked strange, but they were full of anticipation.
Eliza brought a handful of grains and carefully poured them into the small hole in the center of the top stone. The grains fell into the gap between the two stones. Meanwhile, Boro connected the spinning branch from the water wheel to the upper stone.
The entire structure shuddered. The wheel in the brook turned, the branch transferred its motion, and the top stone began to rotate slowly but surely upon the bottom one. A quiet grinding and crushing sound came from the gap between the stones.
And then it happened. From the edge of the stones, a fine, white powder began to pour out.
Eliza scooped up a little on her paw in disbelief. “It’s… soft! And it smells wonderful!”
“Flour!” Boro blurted out, staring in disbelief at the result of their work. “We’ve made flour!”
It wasn’t grit or hard bits. It was real, fine flour. The hard grains they couldn’t eat had become a fine powder, thanks to the power of the water and their own ingenuity. They understood that the water turned the wheel, the wheel turned the branch, and the branch turned the stone. One motion created another.
“This is a mill!” said Jacob the badger proudly. “You’ve built a watermill. You have used the energy of the water to do work.”
They milled for the rest of the day. The water in the brook worked tirelessly for them, and they just had to pour in the grains and collect the fragrant flour. When they had filled a large sack, they decided to celebrate their discovery.
“You can bake tasty flatbreads from the flour,” Jacob advised them. “But fire is very dangerous. I must help you with that.”
Under his supervision and with his help, they mixed the flour with water from the brook and formed small, thin flatbreads. Jacob started a small, safe fire far away from the trees and dry leaves. He carefully placed their flatbreads on a heated stone. In a short while, the wonderful aroma of freshly baked flatbreads spread throughout the little valley.
They invited their other friends from the forest, and everyone had a taste. The flatbreads were delicious. Crispy, warm, and much tastier than the hard grains.
Boro and Eliza sat side by side, eating their flatbreads and watching the wheel that spun tirelessly in the brook. They were no longer frustrated. They were proud. Not just because their bellies were full, but because they had understood something amazing. They understood that even the biggest problem can be solved when you think, work together, and don’t give up after the first failure. And that the power of nature, like the water in the brook, can be a great help if they learn to use it correctly.
“What do you think, children?” Jacob the badger asked them at the end. “What other things could be powered by the force of water?”
And that was a question Boro and Eliza pondered for a long time, as they planned their next great adventure. And maybe, the next time you go for a walk by a brook, you will notice how the water moves pebbles and twigs, and something just as wonderful will occur to you.