How to Destroy Things on a Farm

July 16, 2020July 16, 2020 ~ sanebishop ~ 18 Comments

Under duress from my wife, who believes hiking through a hay field to reach the mailbox is an undue burden, I fixed the lawn mower again. It still has a perpetually flat tire that I have to pump up every time I cut grass and the oil hasn’t been changed in a few years, but it hasn’t self-destructed yet, which is a real shame. Don’t tell my wife this, but I’ve been hoping it explodes so I can get a new zero-turn.

I’ve tried everything I know to hasten its final destruction, but it just won’t die. I set the cutting deck to putting-green height and mowed a rock pile. Tried watered-down gas mixed with floating debris, but the pistons just keep pumping. Washed it and left it drying by the road, hoping criminals would pass by and steal it, but none bit. Or if they did steal it, they brought it right back after hearing the engine run.

Usually, I’m pretty proficient at destroying things, so much so my wife pleads with me to take better care of our belongings–as if I don’t take great care in repairing things I break. In fact, you can barely see the rubber cement I used to fix her platter. Plus, it wasn’t my fault the platter was so easily accessible. The way I see it, if the platter was off limits, it shouldn’t have been front and center in the china cabinet. Did she think the hot dogs were going to carry themselves to the grill?

Last week, it just so happened that I destroyed the bush hog. Really, a rock destroyed it. The rocks in these parts grow really fast, and you never know when a new one will hit a growth spurt and expand. It happens all the time, which is annoying because the rock/blade impact usually shears the shear bolt. You would think bush hog manufacturers would be smart enough to spot such an obvious engineering flaw as a shear bolt, shear bolts being so soft and easily severed. Engineers have little common sense, though. I easily remedied the problem by replacing the shear bolt with a grade-eight bolt made of impenetrable steel. Since that quick fix, I’ve yet to shear a bolt again. If it wasn’t for hitting that blasted rock last week, the bush hog would be running like a top. But repairs take time, and it just so happens that welding back together a shattered universal joint is much more difficult than replacing a shear bolt.

*the ole universal joint welded back together–looks just like new.*

Once you’ve destroyed something, to fix it, see my informative post: How to Fix Stuff on a Farm.

Pavlov’s Dad and a Paranormal Baby

July 9, 2020July 9, 2020 ~ sanebishop ~ 16 Comments

He’s here!–our new bundle of sleep deprivation in the old farmhouse. He goes by the name Thomas. He doesn’t really cry that much, except when others are trying to sleep, at which point he breaks into a chorus that sounds similar to, “Whaa! Whaa! Whaa! Your Boat!”

At this point, a week into his life, I suspect Thomas will grow up to be a famous psychologist because he’s already conducting a Pavlov’s dog-type experiment on his mom and dad. I now associate the sound of Thomas wailing with the act of laying my head on a pillow, so much so I begin to drool from exhaustion anytime I hear him cry.

I’ve quickly learned a baby cry is a very effective sound. It’s a sound that demands action. The only problem, however, is I usually have no idea what the appropriate action is. I’ve asked Thomas to be more specific in his demands, but his method of specifying is only to cry louder.

The hardened nurses at the hospital only taught us the straight-jacket method for dealing with a baby’s uproarious demands. Basically, you treat your baby as if he’s a deranged criminal destined for Arkham Asylum and tightly wrap him in a blanket so he can’t move his arms or hands. The tight swaddle has bought us a few moments of respite at night, though Thomas is already growing proficient in Houdini-like feats of swaddle escape.

Thomas can also perform another magic trick: making pacifiers disappear. I’m not sure how he does it, but he’s already lost two pacifiers. I can’t find them anywhere–it’s as if they just vanished into thin air. I’m starting to wonder if Thomas is in cahoots with aliens who are abducting his pacifiers. Or, now that I think of it, there’s probably a more likely explanation: the Bermuda Triangle that centers over our farm and makes quarter-inch wrenches and hammers routinely disappear also applies to pacifiers. In fact, his lost pacifiers are probably floating around right now in another dimension with my lost tools (for more lost tool jokes see my post How To Fix Stuff on a Farm).

Anyway it’s good to know my brain can still think critically on such little sleep. I was starting to worry I was going a little loony, with the involuntary drool and all. I’d sure hate for Thomas to grow up thinking his dad was bonkers.

Dad isn’t bonkers–he just looks that way.

Thomas Jefferson: Founding Father of Failed Farmers.

July 2, 2020June 30, 2020 ~ sanebishop ~ 8 Comments

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Jefferson.jpg — *TJ: just another yeoman farmer.*

In celebration of July Fourth, let us remember Thomas Jefferson–founding father and author of the Declaration of Independence. By writing such a highfalutin document, however, Jefferson nearly outdid himself and overshadowed his greatest accomplishment, achieving the distinction as Virginia’s worst farmer.

Among neighboring farmers, the joke was Jefferson couldn’t even grow oats and thus merely fed his horses philosophy. This explained his horses’ poor condition. Jefferson’s friend Margaret Bayard Smith wrote, “He is a great agriculturalist and horticulturalist in theory, but practically, I imagine, he knows little of any cultivation, but that of flowers, of which he is extremely fond.”

The Danger of Mimicking a Master

Locals pretty much say the same about me. One farmer even called me “a great agricultural ignoramus.” Like Jefferson, I’m generally not good at growing anything but flowers or plants that end with the suffix -weed. At growing those two things, I excel.

Over the years, I’ve thought about writing important stuff like Jefferson. In fact, in college I started writing a serious epic poem in iambic pentameter called “My Grandma’s Pond,” but gave up when I couldn’t think of a good rhyme for the line, “Into the wind, I cast my plastic worm.”

If I wrote something as earth-shattering as the Declaration of Independence, I’d run the danger of people forgetting my bumper pigweed crop of 2016. Truth be told, I’d be sad if local farmers didn’t slap me on the back and ask, “How’s your pigweed looking this year?”

When we bought the farmstead from my wife’s poppaw, I should have realized that Lowry was up to something. Right after we signed the closing documents, he leapt in the air and kicked his heels together. Little did I know at that point, Lowry had just offloaded his pigweed problem on me, his grandson-in-law. Pigweed had the farm besieged, and I soon found myself fighting an endless war to beat it back. In 2016, I grew such a great stand of pigweed you could barely spot a soybean. The feat won me the unofficial title as the county’s worst farmer.

Last year, however, I nearly goofed and grew a good crop of soybeans. If it wasn’t for a late summer drought, I would have had to scramble to keep my title as our county’s worst farmer. Recently, I’ve gotten a lot of competition from upstarts. One family rented a livestock trailer from the local farm supply. They forgot to secure the trailer’s door and let two cows roam a busy intersection.

Breakthroughs in Agricultural Theory

*Pigweed: also known as the Devil Incarnate*

Since buying the farm, I have, like Jefferson, studied up on agricultural theory and devised some promising methods for combating pigweed. For conventional farmers who are okay using agricultural chemicals, I recommend getting your hands on a barrel napalm. Since I’m nearly certain pigweed seeds can’t survive temperatures over 1000°F, I believe firebombing a field would be an effective way to eradicate pigweed.

For organic farmers, options are more-limited, but I believe procuring a small nuclear device (plutonium being all-natural) would suffice. According to my calculations, a small nuclear blast would release enough radiation to eradicate pigweed for several square miles. However, this method also runs the risk of causing pigweed to mutate and morph into a super-villain. Such a development could make farming in the future more difficult, even for the best farmers.

Anyway, enough nonsense. Happy July Fourth!

(FWIW, the internet believes Thomas Jefferson was an INFJ. You can read more about the INFJ propensity for farming failures in my post Farming Personality Types.)

Inheritable Farming Traits

June 18, 2020June 19, 2020 ~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

I wonder if anyone ever studied the SPF value of grease and barn grime. Early in the summer, sometimes I look down at my arms and think that I’ve finally gotten my seasonal farmer’s tan, only to have the grimy patina wash off in the shower. But after a day drilling soybeans, I’ve gotten it this year; from the bottom of my shirtsleeves down, the brown color isn’t washing off.

My wife tells me I need to wear sunscreen. I try to, but most of the time I forget. I know one day I’m going to regret not wearing any, but secretly I’m kind of proud of my farmer’s tan. I may not be good at growing crops, but I can grow a first-rate farmer’s tan, and that counts for something. I’ve got an even and well-distributed tan on all exposed surfaces (A farmer riding around and around on a cabless tractor is the human equivalent of a chicken turning on a rotisserie).

My wife and I are bracing for our first child–June 30th is the scheduled date of arrival–and we’re hoping the baby has my skin complexion and ability to tan, my curly hair, my wife’s nose and generally, well, her whole face. We also hope the baby has ten fingers and ten toes, though we aren’t picky as to whom the digits take after. Admittedly, a lot of farmers around here are missing a finger, and I worry there might be a local genetic anomaly at play.

To be honest, I know very little about baby humans. And most of what I do know comes from my wife’s corrections. I know I shouldn’t use the term “scours,” especially in the presence of doctors and nurses, when referring to loose baby patties. I know I shouldn’t dip the umbilical cord in iodine–the doctor will handle that.

I know the correct term for store-bought baby milk is “formula,” not “milk replacer.” To be honest, I nearly fell over when I saw how expensive milk replacer was at the grocery store. For a much better price, I told my wife I could get a 50-pound bag of milk replacer at the farm supply. That’s when she said the correct term was “formula,” and that I couldn’t feed our baby Purina milk replacer.

Then, when we got to the baby bottle section of the aisle, my wife did that weird thing where she reads my mind. “No,” she said, before I could say a word, “you can’t use the calf bottles in the barn to feed our baby either.”

“But they hold a lot more than those bottles,” I said. “Using those dinky little things, we’d have to feed our baby more than twice a day.”

She just glared at me, like she does when I make a good point. Now that I think of it, I hope our baby has my ability to make good points.