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.

Dear Bird Dog,

As "this year ends and a new one begins" like the phonies say which I think is no holiday at all but another trumped up scam for phony jollity and spending hard-earned money for frivolus forced "fun", and what farmer has a holiday anyway if you have got 80 head of dairy cattle, but I owe you an apology. Since that trip to France which I did not want I have gotten caught up in romance and a new life as you know, to be corny. And have written nothing for our Yankee blog.

As you know, and you were good enough to come to it and leave us with all these dang Taize cd records and a couple of cases of fancy 1989 frenchie grape juice which is over the head of my wore-out taste buds, I did get hitched in the old family Congregational Church to the charming Miss Millie who just grabbed aholt of me and would not let go like a mongrel cuss with a bad case of the bite and holds which if was one of my dogs would get a boot in the teeth but being a pretty and cheerful woman who can clean a partridge and pluck a duck gets the old walk down the ancestral ile and you get the shiny new ball and chain and the new curtains which you get to pay for and aint that just the beginning of fixin up but dont let them change you. And bless her old young heart, I can still get the flag up the old flagpole or at least halfway up almost anyway on a good day so we have had some good times this fall if I take a bath which I do not like to waste time with and she says You dont smell yourself and I says Well I dont even know myself either, she doesn't mind my shooting as long as I come to church which I may as well do since it didin't kill me yet and she understands what guys like to do and she does like the smell of gunpowder on a fellow andit gives her the teases and the giggles which this old guy can handle but barely sometimes not being the cuddly sort.

Well this time with God and church is "more sentimental than holy"  and "more wine than blood of Christ"  and "more brandy than branded by Christ" as Pastor teases me in my good duck blind the one pappy built at the edge of the pond in the marshy part but what can you do? Pastor hunts grouse and turkey with me and leaves God out of it but how he supports his family God only knows despite the fine venison and my daily milk delivery from the barn and no it aint pasturized but our gals in the barn are happy, healthy and fat and we have the best buttermilk in Vt to put fat and muscle on the bones of his growing hockey playing Green Mountain kids both the guys and the gals. Plus everyone brings them wood for their woodburning furnace.

And well I did give him Pappy's 20 ga. Parker for Christmas which I dont need because by my age I can kill anything with any damn busted and rusted old gun inclduing flying crows with a 22 not to brag but which pleased him no end as you might imagine and he gave me a big christian hug but not his wife Ellie who you would not call a gunnut but it hardly matters since he never misses a partridge anyhow because he says "the force is with him" and will not take personal credit for it, taking modesty to a fault if you ask me, or maybe using layers of ironny etc. so you can hardly find where they are or what they really think, but he is a good no BS Vermonter at heart with a killin streak who got complicated by Yale divinity but who can give you as strong a dose of God as you can handle, and from his gut, which I respect becasue like my Granny always said with God it's a strong dose or no dose at all and there is no middle ground so you make your choice and live with it for your eternity if you get one. Pastor is always kidding like pastors always have to do so as you dont get uncomfortable being with them imagining that they are some special breed which they probably are, and thinking they need to be jokeular to relax same as them army shrinks that they made me talk to after I got the shakes in korea after that time, well, I told you that story and I aint about to blog on that incedent but my knee reminds me every day which was the least of it.

and on gunnut that term I used let me say that a gunnut to me is a city person who likes guns, for country folk guns are tools around the place like pipe wrenches and you would not term a person with six pipe wrenches a wrench nut would you and yet sure I would rather spend two hours to pop a young doe for the freezer than fixing the damn pipes but fixing a pipe has its own satisfactions.

You know Millie has fussed a bit over the old house but not so's a fellow cant come in dirty or leave a loaded shotgun in the kitchen because what damn good is an unloaded one and she will bring me a lunch out on the tractor no matter how far she has to walk and sometimes her ankles swell up a tad she being sligtly past 70 well truthfully quite a bit more than sligtly and you couldnt call her skinny so God bless her sweet heart because she does seem to have a fondness for me even though I aint worth it.She got all of the fireplaces working like a good vermont gal inclduing the bedroom one which I thought was hoky but she makes it work out ok with a glass of that Frenchie grape juice when sarparilla or canadian whiskey was fine with me and a fire and cozy like we was 60 yrs old again, not too bad for an old fart like me who I guess kindof gave up on life when the old wife died bless her sweet old heart and I will never forget anything including putting up with me for all of those years and many hard years including the time I was in Korea doing my duty and she had to run the farm without me.

Well Millie will not cook raccoon which I like on the grill the way you told me to mairinate it she thinks it is ungodly for some reason but she cooks our venison and our wild turkey etc  and has got my Dads old smoker working again and there are no more Wlallmart apple pies for breakfast because she makes pies once a week from our own apples and they are not exactly better but they are made by a gal who cares which I hate to admit makes a difference to me. And if I will punch a hole in the ice in the deep part of the pond she will sit there bundled up with her Bible catching perch for supper like grampa used to do when he got old and tossing them on the ice for two hours bless her heart I would never do that but they are good this time of year and she does it for me as if she was some fisherman or fisher of men in the Bible sense of the term despite catching me with a double barbed hook for certain and tossing me on the ice too which I cannot complain overmuch.

But dont worry about politics Millie is a "take back Vermont" type of gal but not sombre a cute little giggler really and not a Vt commie, with deep roots up here and a belief in family independence and cannot stand the newyorkers and the hippys and the people who wont do their national service because they are the me me me people, any more than I can stand them and have to ski instead of being in church where they belong but where I would not be without being married to a jolly churchlady but as I say it aint kilt me and God if He is there is a vermonter and He sure aint forgot me so why not compromise? The smokes no I will not quit and bless her she does not care and I have already had a healthy long life and going strong and tobacco has not made a dent in me yet and I can say Ive taken more out of tobacco leaf than tobacco has taken out of me. You could say its an injun thing, Bird Dog, just like that cheap canadian firewater we like up here which definitely does not have antiaccidents in it so you have to wait til work is done.

Now you know Bird Dog up here in the Kingdom we arent part of the dekadent USA, we are part of the good old USA, the hard country of my forefathers where men and women are built by sweat and sacrifice and pain and do not expect this life to be a bowl of free apples. Why should it be? We are given life and breath and the strenth of our backs and the brain of a drunk barn pigeon and that is plenty enough to be given speaking practically not religously and we are well forwarned that life is a vale of tears with moments of joy and God knows that is true but you cannot ignore the grandour of our Green Mountains looming at you through the dark every morning at 4 am milking time when Seth and Reuben show up totally oblivius to whatever and everything which is about them in this world but ready to work despite hangovers, lack of brains and common sense etc. and being worked over all night by high school drop out fat girls with tatoos and body peercings with two or three snot-nose demented and 1/2 civilizied brat kids and on the dole which is all they can attract being good workers but basically lazy and ignorant and not overly intelligent beer drinkers hanger-outers and only idly curious at the most and thus not exactly prize stock themselves.

But to be some kind of Christian I should be understanding which I am of these two fellows because they come from immigrant families by which I mean whose greatgrandpappy immigrated to the Green Mountains from the Aderondacks across Lake Champlain to Vermont in 1874 and what kind of damaged pioneer stock gives up and immigrates backwards? Or they couldnt handle the winters the sure sign of a softer breed not really the type a man wants to breed into for strong sturdy stock and the young folks dont always wonder about what they are breeding into but a farmer has to consider it.

So I guess I am not blogging much anymore and I am limiting myself to weekends for my internet fun now that I have a wife to tend to plus I have a farm to run still with hopes that my lazy ponytale truck driving son will take it on as he should if only to show honor to our ancestors who have tilled and dairied this rocky hardass land since 1724. Dont worry Millie would have no tv in the place but we did throw out the busted 1967 Zenith that was sitting in the parlor since it caught on fire about 10 yrs ago and scorched the wall and we do not need that tv crap which only cheapens your life with the phony haha and the phony sports etc., I think, and on this subject Pastor agrees with me and would not own one either but he is a bookish guy and Ellie is too but I dont think she approves of me nor why should she as I am rough on my edges for a refined gal like her I am just a farmer but I have gone the distance have I not.

so take me off of your blogger list but if I have something to say I will email it to you as long as I dont get the Oldtimers disease, my good friend, you who cannot shoot worth a goddamm like a city boy and will eat far more than you can kill but who loves the land and the animals as much as anyone I ever knew.

"Best wishes" as you would say, and we will save you a few gallons of Grade B no you like the rough stuff Grade C syrup in a couple of months. I can just tell we have a good syrup year in front of us.

The Yankee Farmer

Comment fron Bird Dog: Lost another one to Ditec  marriage. The "Laconic Yankee Farmer" helped launch our Yankee blog, and I think it helped launch his life from the sad condition it was in. Hope it helped, anyway. God bless him and Millie, and give them many years of happiness and good hard work together in the Green Mountains. To read his prior posts, including his stuff on Taize, click here.

Well, Bird Dog, I have got myself a problem.

You know I am not a church goer even though my great great grampa built the building, or I should say helped build it, but it just isn’t my cup of meat, you might say, but they can bury me in there churchyard, that’s OK with me, sooner or later either is OK because my life philosophy is just keep on keeping on as my Paw would say which is a mans duty in this life. But for several years now those church ladies have been a bit on my case because I guess I am an eligible widower or maybe they see me as an object of pity living alone in skwaler on the old homestead here in the Northeast Kingdom.

 Well what they did is send a delegation of ladies with hats up here like they do every year collecting money to fix the steeple or whatever which I do and this time they want me to come with them on a church trip to Paris and Lourdes and some other church places which maybe for you rich folks in southern New England is no big deal but up here it is like a trip of a lifetime which Korea already was enough for me. Join the Army and see Korea. Ayup, shure did. Well they at first wanted to go to the Holy Land but they got scared of the diper-head bombers, so they said, and would do that in five years maybe – yes, maybe, if they are still alive then, I think to myself. I suspect some of those nice wrinkled widows just have desines on me as a widdower but I don’t know why an old coger who aint any good company and hardly takes a shower and is half grumpy at least half the time. I know they see me shaved and in a necktie sittin in church and praisin Jesus and reformed without my whiskys and smokes etc. and my bachelor bad habits and peeling wallpaper and grilled coon suppers or bear suppers and loaded rifles all over the place and approx. ten mangy mongrels crappin on the walk and everywhere else you might think to place your boots.

Gee whiz, Bird Dog. Where'd you find that "Analyst" lady? She is over my head, but I'm just a dumb-ass uneducated farmer with muddy boots, and I ain't sure what she's talkin about. There ain't none of those bums up here, and if there are, we stay clear of em. We figure people out pretty quick around here. You just watch and see how they do. You learn that in the Army. No choice. But that ---ing Castro, right. Should have invaded and killed the  slippery bastard years ago and free those poor folk down there from that commie BS. I woulda gone happily, when I was young and ornery, instead of old and ornery. It couldn't have been as bad as Korea. Cute Cuban gals, I heard plenty about them. And Dad was well then, could have handled things on the farm without me. Go in there like Teddy Roosevelt with real men and fix the ----ing mess.

The blackbirds are here and croaking up a storm. A good sound. Looks like we'll go over 4000 gallons with the sugaring. Saw a bear stumbling around the other morning but naturally didn't have my rifle. We aren't red-necks up here with rifles on our tractors. Maybe we are red-necks, but without rifles on our vehicles. Bears are in season now, right, Dog?

The main deal right now is planning the corn planting. All set with the hay fields and we don't need to re-seed them this year. Except we'll do #4 in clover this spring. Freshen it up. And fatten the venison. I promise not to shoot one until sept. But let's not go overboard with those game rules. Deer aren't game. They are called food. Is there a season for beef? City-folk make those rules down in Montpelier and Burlington and they know nothing about the Northeast Kingdom.

Hope you and the litter had a good Easter. Had the kids and daughter in law here. They spruced the place up a bit for me. Which it needed, I guess. Threw out a lot of old junk and ordered new curtains on line. "Country Curtains." Which I really care, but they mean well and I don't need much.

That damn password crap you give me. Daughter visiting up from Worcester for Easter and she showed me how. Man does she find it amusing that her old dad is a blogger on her old 6 year old Dell machine on my phone line.  To me, plain embarassing to put myself out there like I was someone important. Not that anyone is. We have been ass over elbow up here making sugar in the Northeast Kingdom. Not a God-dang New Yorker to be seen, so that's something good. Smoke pouring out of the shack's chimney. Sap flowing like a son of a b. A good year for maple which as I say is a damn bad year for income. Working for nothin'.  That's the Vermont way. We could go 5000 gallons, maybe more. Not all Grade A. I prefer the lower grades, got more substance. But a good vintage, you know. What else? Haven't seen a bear yet but I'm waiting to use that bear-heart recipe. Figure it might build me up. I don't like to complain but my bum knee is a ---ing pain. ---ing Korea. A hell-hole. And don't tell me to go to that VA, Dog, or anywhere else. They'll want to give me a stainless steel knee etc. and I'd be laid up for 6 mos. which a farmer cannot do. Plus there is no ----ing way anyone is taking a saw to my legs. OK, time to bring the coffee down to the boys. Is that enough for you this week, Dog?