Tag: Farming

How to Talk UFOs and Farming

~ sanebishop ~ 35 Comments

For those of you who don’t track sasquatch sightings in your spare time, my county is home to a bigfoot named Knobby. His last sighting was about ten years ago when he was caught snooping through a cabin window. The owner of the cabin called 911 to ask if he could shoot “the beast,” but decided against it on advice from the dispatcher. Instead, he resorted to telling the sasquatch to “Git! Git away from here!” The sasquatch turned and fled, but the man noticed the beast had a “beautiful head of hair.” (This really happened: youtube the video, “CNN: See Bigfoot? Call 911”). 

A local gas station used to sell Knobby T-shirts at the local gas and grocery, but the shirts have been discontinued. These days, bigfoot hunters are few and far between. Instead, they’re all out searching the heavens for UAPs–if you didn’t know, Unidentified Flying Objects are now called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by the government. (Apparently, the Navy released a video of some flying triangles, a.k.a. UAPs, that has the paranormal community salivating and really polishing up their tinfoil hats.)

But the transformation of UFOs to UAPs is what I’m really concerned about in this post. The transformation is a classic case of the deterioration of the English language by jargon, and I know all too well about the harmful effects of jargon. I work at a government agriculture office. 

Sound and Agribusiness Lingo

Agriculture is ground zero for jargon and its fallout on sentences. In fact, the other day I was talking to a young farmer when I realized I couldn’t understand him at all. It wasn’t that he was mumbling. It wasn’t that he spoke a dialect different from my own. It was just his words–words full of sound and agribusiness lingo, signifying nothing. The young man was fond of utterances like the following:

“What the public doesn’t understand is that modern agricultural producers are utilizing the latest technologies and materials–we’re deploying the safest chemistries and best genetics to maximize revenue and increase productivity, just to feed the world.”

Young Farmer

Admittedly, I didn’t have the heart to tell the young farmer that what the public doesn’t understand are his verbs and nouns. And it’s only a matter of time before the last bastion of his understandable lingo, “to feed the world,” is transformed into some monstrosity like, “to replenish the planet’s gastric capacity.” The oddity is that when the young farmer talks of other topics, not related to agriculture, his sentences are both clear and intelligible, but the moment agriculture is broached in conversation, a switch flips and he speaks in riddles.

Of course, the government is partly to blame for this. For decades, the USDA has referred to farmers as “producers” or “operators.” I think the intention is to make farming seem more modern and business-like, to leave behind the pitchfork and overalls stereotype. So highfalutin farm words are, in a sense, an innocent way to puff out one’s chest, to say “I’m important.”

But concocted words like producer and operator do more harm than good. They only exacerbate the separation and increase the distance between non-farmers and farmers. A child will never comprehend an “animal unit” if it can’t comprehend a heifer or steer. 

And not all separation is so innocent. Words are purposefully manipulated to soften and hide meaning. Thus, killing becomes depopulate; slaughterhouse becomes processing plant; pesticides become chemistries. My favorite metamorphosis is the transformation of the word lagoon from a waterbody in a tropical paradise to a manure pond at the end of a loafing shed. 

To be fair, alternative agriculture is not without offenses. Words and phrases like biodynamic, regenerative, and beyond sustainable are now bandied about with such frequency and carelessness that one never knows exactly what they mean. I am often left wondering if these words are merely hip, feel-good marketing terms. Often they’re used vaguely and all-inclusively, for anything from moon crystals to cover crops–just more words meaning everything and thus meaning nothing.

Farm talk didn’t used to be this way. Listen to any old-timer talk about farming and you’ll immediately notice a difference. You’ll notice farmers are farmers, not producers. You’ll hear nothing of “animal units” but plenty about cows, or more specifically the twenty brood cows grazing the back pasture. You’ll hear idioms that are both illustrative and clear, like “meaner than a Jersey bull” or “madder than a wet hen.” And forget feeding the world—you’ll hear about the struggle to feed the family when the boll weevil came through in 1949.  And you’ll not only hear the words, but you’ll see images and know meaning. That is how to talk farming. 

But back to the point of this post: if you’re talking about flying triangles (that look remarkably similar to Imperial Star Destroyers), you should call them UFOs, not UAPs. 

UFO, not UAP

Beware of Beginning Olive Growers

~ sanebishop ~ 16 Comments

One of the occupational hazards of working in a government agriculture office is the increased likelihood of encountering, if not being cornered and trapped by, a beginning olive grower. At our ag center, every agent who provides some form of government-sanctioned farming assistance–from the Farm Service Agency to Cooperative Extension, NCDA, Soil and Water District, and even the Forest Service (olives growing on trees)–has been ambushed once or twice by our local would-be olive grower, a serial ambusher whose ability to hold hostages through the spoken word is downright frightening. 

At first sight of his car pulling into the parking lot, the ag center reverberates with the sound of office doors closing and the clatter of government employees diving under desks, only to be followed by a hushed silence as the olive grower traverses the hallway in search of a victim to waylay. Sometimes a benevolent soul, usually a career public servant seeking to prank a new hire, will assist the olive grower in his search for the best employee to answer olive-growing questions. 

One morning, as a new soil conservationist, nary had I yet leaned back in my chair and kicked up my boots before the local field crop agent, who was set to retire in two weeks, guided the olive grower into my office. “Good morning, Stephen,” said the agent, “I’d like to introduce you to Tyler Wilson. He wants to start growing olives and has a few questions.”

To be honest, I was caught by surprise, completely unprepared for any discussion on olives. Had I had time to open my mouth, I would have admitted I knew little about olive culture, only enough to doubt they would grow well in our climate and soils. Thankfully, I didn’t betray my ignorance because I was quickly informed that the foothills of North Carolina was a prime olive-growing region. Tyler Wilson told me so himself. 

Tyler told me a lot. He talked non-stop for two hours about olives and was possibly the foremost expert in the olive-growing industry, despite the fact that he had yet to plant his first olive tree. Eventually, I feigned the symptoms of food poisoning and politely declined Tyler’s offer to drive me to the hospital to continue our chat. The last time I saw Tyler in the ag center, he was interrogating our janitor about the best sanitation practices to prevent disease in olive orchards. And judging by our janitor’s dazed expression, I would say Tyler’s long-winded discussions about olives should probably be outlawed by the Geneva Convention

Whitman is Hardly an Expert in the Poaceae Family

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

I know 2020 has been less than stellar, and I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but for all of you who thought Leaves of Grass would be the perfect gift for the farmer in your life, your gift is going to be a dud. 

I ordered it a few months ago because farmers are always pestering me with questions about pasture grass identification, and I needed a good pocket manual, something that I could whip out of my back pocket and refer to in times of doubt. This manual had nearly a five-star rating on Amazon and was a slim volume, only 145 pages. I thought that’s just what I need.

Yikes! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT open and recite anything from this manual in the presence of a big-time cattle farmer, no matter how stumped you are by a strange grass clump. At best, if you live in an area with rocky topsoil, you’ll be quickly stoned to death. At worst, you’ll be left to wander the pasture alone, while the big-time cattle farmer hurries over the horizon to the nearest gas station grill, Lowry’s Country Corner, to insert into circulation the vicious rumor that the local soil conservationist likes poetry. Afterward, you’ll be forced to live the rest of your days as an agricultural outcast and farmers will point and snicker at you at the sale barn and ask you, derisively, if you’ve read lately at any open mic nights.

So, just FYI, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is not the authoritative source for species identification in the grass family. For a more accurate field guide, I suggest, “Grasses, Sedges, and Rushes: An Identification Guide” by Lauren Brown and Ted Elliman.

Remembering the Prickly Parts

~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

A few years ago, after plowing up an old terrace, I found an arrowhead, a mostly intact quartz tip. I rushed inside to show my wife, but she hardly shared my enthusiasm and seemed more interested in the dirt clods I left on the floor. So, I ended up taking the arrowhead to work to show off, and I just happened to leave it on my desk, where it remains to this day. The arrowhead is a wonderful ice-breaker.  Often farmers will be sitting in my office while I’m scrambling to locate the correct version of the correct form. They’ll scan their surroundings and notice the arrowhead, which will spark much story-telling in arrowhead lore and buy me some time. One farmer said he was digging a hole with post-hole diggers and found a musket ball and an arrowhead in the same hole. This statement was the prelude to an hours-long conjecture session between the two of us on how those two items ended up in close proximity in the ground, which was more than enough time for me to locate form AD7HM-13/42 version 12.3. 

Having had many conversations about arrowheads, I’ve noticed arrowhead storytelling often contains an element of one-upmanship, as each arrowhead is a little larger than the last one mentioned. That said, I once watched a farmer find a truly massive spear tip. To be honest, the farmer needed that pick-me-up. We had already dug several soil test pits along a little branch that runs into Buffalo Creek. The soil, however, was nothing but coarse, no-account sand–not a layer of clay to be found anywhere. The farmer was getting  despondent at the thought of hauling in clay from offsite to build the dam for his irrigation pond. Then the backhoe emptied another bucket  beside a test hole and a five-inch spear tip tumbled down the dirt pile. The find completely changed  the farmer’s glum demeanor. 

 “This probably killed a buffalo,” he said gleefully, as we all stood around and studied the  spear tip. 

  “Could be a thousand years old,” said the backhoe operator, who had disembarked his steed to join in the studying. 

“Maybe ten-thousand,” I said. 

  “Could have killed a saber-toothed tiger,” the farmer said. We all peered down into the hole looking for saber-tooth tiger bones, but, alas, found none. To this day, the farmer still talks about that find and, for what it’s worth, cites me as a witness. He also suspects the spear tip brought him good luck. Despite the sorriest soil I’ve ever seen for a pond site, his pond miraculously held water. 

Likely, that spear tip is of Catawba origin. The North Carolina foothills where I live is mostly old Catawba territory. I won’t pretend  to be an expert on Native Americans, but from what I’ve read, the Catawba were a welcoming and  benevolent tribe, which is no small feat considering the Scotch-Irish settlers tended to be brash and rearing to fight (it was the Scotch-Irish Overmountain Men who whipped the British at Kings Mountain, helping turn the tide of the American Revolution). 

Sadly, the Catawba’s friendliness only hastened their demise. In the late 1600s, the  Catawba here totaled around 4,800 members. A hundred years later, their population had  plummeted to 250. From trading, smallpox spread quickly, ravaging their tribe. In 1775, a trader  named James Adair documented an old Catawba maize field that ran along a river bottom for seven  miles. He marveled that the Catawba must have once been a strong and numerous tribe to clear  and work a field that large. By 1830 when the Indian Removal Act was signed, the Catawba  population had dwindled so low that the government didn’t even bother relocating the few  surviving members through the Trail of Tears.  

One unintended drawback to the no-till era of farming is arrowheads remain hidden. Don’t get me wrong, saving soil is important, but finding arrowheads once reminded farmers of their predecessors here. And for people like me with Scotch-Irish ancestors who likely benefited from the downfall of tribes like the Catawba, it’s easy to glaze over the parts of our past that are prickly as a spear tip.

Farmer Strong

~ sanebishop ~ 14 Comments

I used to have a ball cap from my local farm credit. It simply said “Carolina Farm Credit,” and I wore it so frequently that after a few years my wife retired it in a trash can without my consent. So I asked our local farm credit representative if I could have a new hat, and he obliged–only, the new hat says, “Farmer Strong.” 

Ugh.

Might as well give a squirrel a hat that says “Grizzly Bear Strong.” Then the squirrel could stroll around the forest understory feeling self-conscious and a little ridiculous, all because of his headwear. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m used to feeling like a moron because of my actions, but feeling like an oxymoron because of my wardrobe is a step too far. Sadly, my physique does not exude superior strength, no matter what my hat proclaims. 

Case in point,  I was once blown away by a stiff breeze. Of course, had I known the power of hay tarps, I wouldn’t have tied a tarp corner to a belt loop (to keep my hands free while traversing the haystack) and, in so doing, affixed myself to a sixty-foot by forty-foot sheet of polyethylene. When the wind gusted, the tarp plucked me off the side of the haystack, and I instantly realized why parasailing occurred over water. It’s amazing the epiphanies you have while skittering across the stubble of a freshly-cut hay field. 

Then there was the time I lost a wrestling match with a pig. It was your basic muddy pig-pen match. My wife wanted to perform life-saving healthcare on the pig’s ear, so I jumped on the pig’s back and tried to pin it down. The squealing pig, however, performed a technically-demanding wrestling maneuver, what’s called a  reverse cradle, and quickly pinned me. In so doing, the pig busted my glasses (free farming advice: never wear glasses while wrestling a pig) and then trotted around the fence-line, grunting and gloating. 

And it’s not just me. Have you been to the sale barn lately? You’re not likely to see many strapping specimens of the human species. The sale barn is where farmers go to trade cows and cardiologists go to find new patients. Once upon a time the act of digging post holes, carrying feed sacks, and hefting hay bales caused farmers muscle fibers to expand. Now post-hole augers, front-end-loaders, and hay spears mean farming is less physically demanding than ever; it’s become more or less sitting in a tractor seat and moving a joystick. 

But I’ll tell you who is strong. It’s the unseen men and women in the blackberry rows, the one’s picking tractor-trailer loads of berries, berry by berry, until their fingers are stained with blood or berries or both (those are no thornless canes, I assure you). It’s the five-person Guatemalan “catching crew” whose job is to bend down and pick up every eight-pound chicken, in a poultry house full of twenty thousand chickens, and stuff them in cages for transport so we can later devour those Chick-fil-A sandwiches. It’s the workers in the pumpkin fields who heft every single jack o’ lantern, all so we can carve a silly face in it. 

All kidding aside, a “Farmer Strong” hat would look a lot better on them than me.