Re-posted from June 2, 2005. For more of our farmer friend, click The Laconic Yankee Farmer category.
Sorry it's been so long, Bird Dog,
since I wrote but we got the plowing done, as I said we would, but it has been a bitch of a job of work due to the soil remaining so damp this year and still some pools of water, and the – ing machines always giving us problems of course. Esp. the hydrogenator on the Farmall, which is a reliable machine generally except for burning almost as much oil as gas, and of course loose plow blades. We figure we have them all ready to work a month ago and tuned up but some goddam thing always goes wrong which is why we farmers make the big bucks, right Bird Dog?
They’ve got the corn seed down in Mass. and we can do it any day now, just hoping for a sunny dry spell so the seed don’t rot before it can sprout. I don’t want to jinks things, but we’ll be OK. We are putting down the red clover fields tomorrow and you and your pals can have some fat clover-fed turkey and deer when the time come and I know what sticklers you fellows are about the game regs being obviously not real country boys which your chain saw posting pretty much summed it up.
No news of course is good news up here, so it’s just the usual fights Seth and Ruben are having with their fat girlfriends in town and I tell them to try and meet some of the fancies with their summer houses and skinny daughters without already a bunch of snot-nosed illegitimate brats etc. on the state dole because I have heard that the fancies sometimes find real working fellows charming in a rough cut way not "refined," not suttle you might say and basically ignorant but they do not feel up to it and likely they arent up to anorexia girls with snappy repartee. See we are exotics to the fancies and the fancies are exotics to us, the way I see it, but maybe best to stick to your own kind and dont put on airs. And even if they dont intend it dont let other folks go slumming on you as we used to say because it is degrading to all concerned. I saw it in Korea these buddies would patronise you and not even know it but still they would die to save you because we are all Americans. And my own boy well he’s doing good at the mill but he keeps saying he shoulda gone into the Service and done some good and maybe kill some insurgance or something and get some free training and damn right he shoulda as a Green Mountain farm boy and I told him to but he was too immature with his girls and his erges and his excuses and his ponytail and probably pot too and now he is too old for Uncle Sam to want his lazy truck driving ass.
But the main thing we have right now Bird Dog is happy cows, happy cattle, smiling cattle, in clover, as they say, and our milk production isn’t entirely bad. And I dont need the money because what do I need but you got to keep on or you will decay. Well, the other good deal is that I did not shoot that fat bear with my .357 down at the bottom of #6 and I ain’t changing my story and that meat in the freezer was pure mana from heaven, but I done like you said and I marinate it well for a day or two, even if I feel kind of girly doing it and then put it on that charcoal thing you give me, well I use wood or charcoal whichever I have. The boys won’t eat bear they prefer McDonalds or spagetti if the fat girls fix it for them but there is nothing like a bear flank steak after a hard day of work.
Comment from Editor in reponse to emails:
The Farmer seems to find it amusing to sound quaint. He is neither innocent of irony nor mechanically ignorant. He just calls every part of a mechanical device a "hydrogenator." He can probably spell better than he does, too, but I would never make an issue of it. He can rip apart an engine faster than you can drive to the auto parts shop or, more likely, Starbucks.
