Northern Farmer

We’ve all heard about people coming to the country and want to live an agrarian lifestyle and how they crashed and burned in the attempt. Heck, we even had the most famous country type guy try it in our immediate area, he’s the one on public radio every week with the Prairie Home Companion, just lived a few miles down the road years ago. These folks just can’t figure out what they did wrong. So as a public service to aspiring agrarians everywhere I’ll try to remedy the situation. There are a few rules one has to live by, and I touched on this subject a couple of months ago.

Now, when you move to the country and think the neighbors are a bit odd, don’t worry about it. WE ARE. We’ve seen em come and go, but lately it’s just come, so we’re a bit wary. Now, your new neighbors will help you, whether you want us to or not. When your starting out farming or homesteading there’s nothing like the neighbor down the road to loan you equipment. It might be a piece of junk or something worth more than Buckingham Palace. It makes no difference, you’ll get it loaned to you with a happy heart.

After you’re done with it, it will probably be ruined, but that’s OK, That’s the way it is out here, we always destroy our neighbor’s machinery. That’s to be expected. So why the cold shoulder from your new neighbor? Think hard, was it your breath, no, believe me in farming country we all have breath that could grind a nuclear reactor to a stop, it’s a snuff thing. Think back to the smallest possible thing you can think of. And it’ll all boil down to you forgot to give him or her their hitch pin back. This is one of the most serious things that could possibly ever happen in the country. OK, laugh if you want but it’s real!!! Your kids will be forever blacklisted if it’s figured out you took your neighbors hitchpin. So if you forgot it unintentionally what can you do. That’s a tough one, believe me. The first step is take it to the farmer if he’s still speaking to you. That’ll sometimes remedy it if too much time hasn’t past. But you never know, the damage might have been done.

Buying a new hitch pin sometimes doesn’t work. You gotta figure the love the farmer had for his old pin. He mighta made it himself. Or at least bought it at an auction thirty years ago for ten cents. Heck, it might have been handed down from grandpa! But whatever, it’s an important piece of his or her life. Rarely does a farmer buy one brand new. It’s kinda an image thing, a store bought hitch pin, must be from a yuppie. Boy, I can remember everytime I was ever asked, “you got my hitch pin”, and scrambled to get it. How embarrassing.

So, now you know the important stuff, or at least a bit of it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.