Tag: cows

Gossip and Gravy Biscuits

~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

There is a saying in the country, “Put on clean underwear in case you’re in a car wreck.” The idea behind this saying is that it might be embarrassing if first responders caught you wearing dirty drawers. 

I suppose the other idea implicit in this saying is that first responders are, well, are prone to gossip and might spread that tidbit of information throughout the countryside, which may be why Congress passed the HIPAA privacy law. First responders are now legally bound not to divulge information about your dirty underpants, unless you consent for them to do so–so be careful what forms you sign. 

Some first responders circumvent this law by also being farmers. It is a gray area to be sure, but it has generally been understood in this country that farmers are allowed to gossip with impunity, especially if the gossip takes place at a gas station grill in the morning, while all the farmers are strategizing and coordinating their daily movements and activities. Thus, if I ever need to know what is going on in the county, I always call one of my neighbors, Jimmy, who happens to be a first responder, farmer, and daily patron of Beam’s Country Corner, the best place for a breakfast biscuit in the whole county. Beam’s also carries 100% non-ethanol gas, so you don’t have to worry about clogging up a carburetor, though clogging an artery might still be a concern, especially if you’re fond of gravy biscuits. 

 You will always hear Jimmy, before you see him–he usually sits in the rickety booth at the back of Beam’s Country Corner, the booth closest to the coffee pot. Some farmers at Beam’s refer to Jimmy endearingly as the Mouth of the South (a throwback to Jimmy Hart, who coined the moniker as Hulk Hogan’s ring manager), but I consider that an insult since Jimmy is an important source of information beyond just a local and regional reach.

I’ve never met a man who knows as many people (their families and family histories and family secrets) or as many politicians (their benefactors and supporters and political secrets) or as many cattle (their sires and pedigrees and possibly their secrets, though cows tend to hold their cards pretty close to the vest). He knows everybody, two-legged and four-legged in the county. 

In my opinion, every community needs someone like Jimmy. For one, with phonebooks now a thing of the past, if you need a cell phone number for someone, you just call Jimmy and he will give it to you. He will also give you a treatise on that person’s life, so if you’re in a hurry, it’s better to text him. Second, if you need to know if your cows are on the loose and roaming the roadside, you can call Jimmy and he’ll confirm whether it’s your cows, plus he will give you the latest information on their movements and whereabouts. 

In short, Jimmy is an invaluable resource. Hopefully, you know someone like Jimmy, but even if you don’t, you can rest assured he knows you.

Helpful Farm Definitions

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

The other day, I happened to be riffling through the dictionary for a word when I randomly flipped to the page that contained the entry for tractor. I couldn’t help but stop and refresh my memory. According to Merriam-Webster, a tractor is a powerful motor vehicle with large rear wheels used chiefly on farms for hauling equipment and trailers.  

What a terrible definition! It’s almost as if lexicographers, trained in etymology and semantics, have little real-world knowledge of the defining qualities and singular characteristics of the mighty tractor. As an English major, who happens to own two tractors (or be owned by two tractors–I’m not sure which), I feel uniquely qualified to offer a slightly more accurate definition. A tractor is a sedentary piece of machinery with large flat rear tires used chiefly on farms to play roulette by guessing which hydraulic hose will burst next.

This farmer just hit the jackpot.

This pairs well with my definition of a farm: a farm is a rural open air casino where people can gamble wholesomely on the propagation of crops, but where Mother Nature and the Banker always win in the end. From this bedrock definition of a farm, you can then derive many other farm terms:

A farmer is a person missing a finger who is addicted to gambling on the propagation of crops. 

A farm hand is a young in-law who primarily performs grunt work and dangerous tasks and whose fingers and hands are still intact but generally considered disposable. 

A farm dog is the dog that runs off with the finger after the severance. 

A regenerative farm is dedicated to the regeneration of soil and missing fingers through adherence to  ancient and wise agrarian texts. 

A goat is an animal that trained at Houdini’s School for Escape and Get Away. 

A pig is animal certified in farmer psychoanalysis and talk therapy. 

A cow is an animal with four stomachs, but with such poor sense that it fills them all with grass. 

A chicken is the smartest animal in the barnyard kingdom, due primarily to its ability to scam farmers into building elaborate coops and enclosures in exchange for a few fresh eggs.

A fox is a wild animal that has evolved to infiltrate elaborate coops and enclosures and ruin the asset-to-income ratio for the production of a few fresh eggs. 

A farmers’ market is where a happily married man goes to sell produce and a few fresh eggs, only to have a fight off a bunch of presumptuous women who keep asking him about his spraying habits. Apparently, the sight of homegrown tomatoes is an aphrodisiac. 

An old farmhouse is a multigenerational domicile whose primary function is to provide shelter for annoying ancestral ghosts, all of whom are extremely opinionated about the never-ending home improvement projects of the living inhabitants. 

Hopefully, these definitions give you a clearer picture into the true nature of life on a farm, or at least my life on a farm, which, I admit, may not be indicative of others’ experiences, especially for farmers more competent than I am. Oddly, despite the generally harrowing nature of the above definitions, I would define farm life as a generally pleasant and rewarding way to spend one’s days on Earth.

Man’s Endless Battle Against Mud

~ sanebishop ~ 2 Comments

May the odds be ever in your favor–that’s what I think whenever we have to load cows. There are two types of cows in a cattle chute: passive-aggressive cows (a.k.a immovable cows) and aggressive cows (a.k.a. cows that snort and kick). I can’t blame them. I’d be mad too if an annoying creature was pushing me down a muddy hallway into a strange dark trailer. Cows aren’t the brightest animals in the barnyard, but they aren’t stupid either. If I was in a similar situation and a smaller animal, like a squirrel, was pushing on my hindquarters and yelling gibberish at me, I’d kick the fire out of it too. 

The problem is cows don’t respect gentle pleas for mutual cooperation, which is unfortunate for introverts. We, introverts, need a good five minutes just to warm our vocal cords up enough to let out a respectable, “Hey cow, move cow!” By that time, first impressions have already been made, and the cows have identified us as a pushover. In fact, statistically speaking there are more extroverts currently in America because way back in the Wild West days introverts were more likely to get pushed over and trampled by cows, drastically reducing their ability to mosey into a town and attract mates with their best Clint Eastwood impression. 

Sometimes my wife asks me why we need so much farm junk, and the short answer is, “mud.” When your trailer with four cows on it gets stuck after managing to make it two whole feet from the corral, you need a tractor to pull the truck and trailer out. And when your tractor bottoms out trying to pull the truck and trailer out, you need another tractor to pull out the first tractor and truck and trailer. 

Same goes for boots. Farmers have to have multiple pairs of boots to extricate footwear from mud holes. This time of year, cows have a considerable advantage because they don’t have to wear rubber boots in the mud. Boots are notoriously slow to biodegrade, as evidenced by the fact that ancient boots have been located, without their partner boot, in archaeological sites, meaning long ago an ancient farmer was likely hopping around on one foot trying not to get his ancient sock dirty. Whether he fell over and took a breather to wallow in the self-pity of a good mud hole, we may never know–but we do know he left a boot for perpetuity, a sign of man’s endless battle against mud. 

The Antagonistic Relationship Between Extraterrestrial Shapeshifters and Cows

~ sanebishop ~ 7 Comments

I was recently expanding my knowledge by watching an educational TV program in which men of science investigate extraterrestrial activity at a farm called “Skinwalker Ranch.” The series starts off with the men of science standing around a dead cow in a pasture, and one man of science states authoritatively, “This isn’t normal. It’s hard to kill a cow.” The other men of science agree, which is why my wife has very little respect for men or science. 

Notably, she points out there are no women of science involved in this investigation, which is a good point but easily explained: Likely women of science are too busy trying to cure cancer or other human ailments and not prioritizing what really matters, like whether extraterrestrials are visiting earth and tormenting our cows. 

Apparently, the reason the ranch is called “Skinwalker Ranch” is because the aliens beamed themselves down to earth, where they then use shapeshifting abilities to change skins and impersonate humans, meaning they’re hiding in plain sight and then sneaking off to kill cows in their down time. Of course, the men of science have some alternative hypotheses for the cow deaths, including radiation from UFO spaceships, laser beams from UFO spaceships, and one admittedly outlandish theory that the cow deaths are terrestrial in origin and caused by a yet-to-be discovered cryptozoological species living in a nearby desert cave. 

Speaking of cryptozoological species, the head of security for the investigative team is named “Dragon.” Dragon’s job is to carry big guns everywhere to protect the men of science from the aliens with radioactive laser beams. Dragon takes his job seriously, and on one occasion he gets spooked and shoots a tree, believing it to be an alien shapeshifted into vegetative form, but after closer inspection it was just a tree.

As you can imagine, this show is not only educational but quite entertaining, and frankly it’s not something you’d expect to see on the stuffy ole History Channel. In recent years the History Channel has really upped its historical game with all the focus on ancient aliens, who are much more interesting than their ancient human counterparts who sat around all day chipping away at stones and grunting. Recently, I’ve been trying to better myself by watching more mentally enriching TV like historical alien programming instead of mind-numbing TV like cable news, which spends too much talking about pointless politics and very little time on issues that are important to everyday Americans, like mysterious alien cattle mutilations. 

After about fifteen minutes of watching “Skinwalker Ranch,” I experienced some paranormal activity of my own when the remote mysteriously disappeared and the TV suddenly switched to HGTV. My first thought was to blame my wife–but then I remembered the simplest solution is the most likely, meaning either interference from an extraterrestrial laser beam or my wife is an extraterrestrial shapeshifter. 

Rebel Without A Cause

~ sanebishop ~ 12 Comments

Normally I’m a law abiding citizen. But whenever a law enforcement officer comes around, I’m a rebel without a cause, just breaking the law out of nervous impulses. My wife normally calls me “old pokey” when I’m driving, but let me glimpse a patrol car in the rearview mirror and suddenly I’m Mad Max. When officers finally pull me over for erratic maneuvers, they never believe me when I tell them it’s their fault.   

ME: “Officer, I was driving quite responsibly until you got behind me, then I got all nervous.”

OFFICER: “Sir, you were swerving all over the place, I’m going to need you to exit the car. When was the last time you had anything to drink?”

ME: “Eleven years, if you count that one drink of champagne. Thirty-five otherwise.”

OFFICER: “Sir, your pupils are dilated.” 

ME: “I think that’s just from fear.”

OFFICER: “I’m going to administer a field sobriety test. Sir, will you count backwards…”

I may be the only teetotaler in history who has had to walk the line multiple times. Thankfully, I passed the tests, but I will say that walking in a straight line toe-to-toe is a lot harder than you’d think when your freedom depends on it. The problem is that even when I’m innocent, I act guilty. 

The Trial, by Kafka, is my worst nightmare. In the novel, an innocent man is arrested for an unknown reason. Then he spends the next year trying to discover why and prove his innocence. But his neurotic behavior makes everyone assume he’s guilty. Then, in depressing Kafka fashion (spoiler alert), he’s executed. 

Just the thought of that plot sends shivers to my epidermis. Once I thought it was actually coming true. It was the night when a sheriff’s deputy pounded on my front door. For a moment before I opened the door, I thought, “What in the world have I done to get arrested?” 

Turns out, I had just left a gate open, and my cows were standing in the middle of the road. But I don’t think my heart has ever fully recovered. 

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