Dear County Agent Guy

by Jerry Nelson

  During the centuries that preceded the advent of modern refrigeration, making lutefisk was an essential way to preserve calories for the winter. Folks who turn up their noses at lutefisk have probably never faced the choice of either slowly starving to death over a period of weeks or eating something that could quite possibly kill you today. Those of us who continue to enjoy lutefisk—even though lye-free fish is readily available at any supermarket—are honoring the memory of that long-ago Norseman who first said, “Yeah, sure, give me a chunk. I’ll give that stuff a try.”

  And no Nordic winter holiday gathering would be complete without lefse, Scandinavia’s answer to crepes and pita. If made correctly, lefse can be a tender and tasty addition to any meal. It can be used to mop up gravy or herd stray peas. Made incorrectly, lefse can be used for shoe repair. As with many culinary customs, there are numerous variations on lefse recipes, but they all have one thing in common: potatoes.

  Lefse making begins with a kettle of boiled potatoes. The spuds are cooled and mashed and sent through a ricer to get rid of any lumps. Flour is then added. Most lefse recipes also call for sugar, cream, and some sort of shortening. The best lefse is made with lard.

  The lefse dough is rolled out as thin as tissue paper, then given a quick turn on a hot griddle. A skilled, steady hand is needed during this process lest the lefse sheets become torn. The lefse is left to cool and is buttered and spun into rolls prior to serving. Lefse is an absolute necessity for cleaning one’s plate of any extra melted butter or stray bits of lutefisk.

  When my wife and I were newlyweds, we decided to host a holiday get-together for our families. On the appointed day, my wife was a blur of frenetic activity, scurrying about, cooking, cleaning, accumulating an aura of stress in the same manner that a powerful magnet attracts iron filings. I, on the other hand, was the epitome of cool-headedness as I sat calmly sipping a cold one while I simultaneously kept tabs on the score of an important televised sporting event. “Slow down,” I advised from my perch on the recliner. “They aren’t even gonna be here for a couple of hours! And then you know how it goes: Everyone’s gotta stand around awhile and yak about how little Suzy has grown and on and on . . . I wouldn’t even start boiling the taters until they got here.”

  My wife suddenly turned a whiter shade of pale. “Potatoes! I KNEW I forgot something. I gotta go to the store. Here, you stir the gravy while I’m gone.”

  She ran to the car and tore off in a spray of gravel, which reminded me of the fact that drag racing would be on later. I assumed command of the kitchen and made a quick appraisal of the situation. Everything seemed to be under control except for one glaring deficiency: There was no lutefisk cooking.

  Luckily, I had taken the precaution of purchasing a massive slab of lutefisk a few days earlier. In short order, I had the lutefisk nestled happily in a pot of boiling water. When my wife jogged back into the house she stopped abruptly, sat in a chair, and worked up a crying jag. I gave her a hug. “I know,” I said soothingly. “These holidays have a way of getting a person down.”

  “It’s not that!” she sobbed. “Can’t you smell it? Why did that stupid sewer have to back up today?” I told her that I couldn’t smell anything amiss and tried to lift her spirits by showing her my culinary masterpiece.

  “Gross,” she said. “So that’s what stinks. Don’t tell me you’re gonna eat this stuff. It smells more like it should be buried.”

  As our guests arrived, a definite pattern emerged. My relatives would enter our house, take a deep whiff, and say, “Mmm, smells like the holidays!” Her relatives tended to just wrinkle up their noses. Our relatives soon segregated into two groups: Mine gathered in the dining room and noshed the day away. Hers hung by the windows, making a big show of trying to suck in outside air.

  Which all explains why I now have to cheat on my wife, so to speak. I wonder, can a guy thaw frozen lutefisk by holding it under his armpit? In any case, I don’t imagine it’ll hurt the flavor any. •

  Dear County Agent Guy

  I understand you’re the one to talk to about herbicides. Well, I have a weed problem that no one seems to have the answer for. I am referring to cattails in my corn. I have looked at dozens of herbicide labels, and none are effective for cattails in corn.

  While I’m on the subject of corn pests, maybe you can help me with another problem with my corn, namely ducks swimming around in it. I know those ducks are cute but their little webbed feet have claws on the toes and I’m afraid they might be shredding some corn leaves.

  Another problem is town people. I don’t mind them hanging out by my cornfield, but I wish they would leave them dang power boats and Jet Skis at home. Probably you know a county agent guy from way down South who could loan me a few of those gators that I hear they got. Maybe I could use them gators to take care of both the ducks and that other varmint problem at the same time.

  It’s been kinda wet this year. The other day, I was driving up to the north place when I saw my neighbor standing out in his field in knee-deep mud. I stopped and asked if he needed some help. He said yeah, he was stuck. I told him I’d run home for a lariat. He said to forget that and bring my big chain. My chain? I asked. Yeah, he said, I’m standing on top of my pickup cab. I said I’d swing by and tell his wife that he’d probably be late. No need, he said, she’s in the cab.

  Isn’t that dangerous? I asked. Why do you think I’m standing on the sunroof? he says. I ain’t letting her out until I get a running head start. How’s she taking it? I wondered. Well, he said, the continual swearing quit about ten minutes ago. Now he could just hear occasional reference to his low IQ and his recent ancestry. I said that ain’t true, I know your mom and pop were married! And I know that neither of them was dogs.

  Well, it happened to me, too. The other day, I got stuck. Not just a little, but buried to the muffler, hole in the world stuck. It took three tractors, four men, two kids, and a dog to get me out. (The dog was in charge of the life preserver. Or was it the brandy? No, that was last winter. Good boy, Elmo.)

  So anyway, when they got me out, the neighbors and I stood and looked at the hole I left. It was almost as big as the tractors. One of them looked at it and said, “Well, that was fun.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was almost as fun as the time I went to the dentist and he was trying to numb up the roof of my mouth and the next thing I know novocaine is rolling out of my nose. That was a blast.”

  Which got me to thinking about what I should do with that hole once it dried out. I thought about filling it in, but the kids said not until they practiced rappelling down the sides. So I thought maybe I’d advertise it as the northernmost branch of the Grand Canyon, but Fate took a hand.

  That night, as I tried to sleep, I thought I heard a low moaning sound coming from that field. I got up to look, but darkness and fog had settled, and I couldn’t see a thing. The next morning it was so foggy, you had to chew the air to get it down. I heard the low moaning like the night before so I lit out for the source of it. I got about fifty feet from where I got stuck, when the fog lifted enough for me to see a big something or the other had taken over my hole.

  I stood there dumbfounded when a man hollered, “Ahoy there! We anywhere near St. Louis?” Sure as heck, there sat a big old barge full of grain in my field! Wet as it is, I hope for more rain so we can get that thing pulled out again. I mighta been stuck, but at least I wasn’t lost, too.

  That sorta reminds me of the time we made a trip to see the wife’s uncle in California. One day her uncle Jim took me for a ride, and when we stopped we were by this big old slough. We stood there for a while looking at it until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Jim,” I says, “ya know, my friend Bud owns a ’dozer and a backhoe. I bet he could drain that dang slough!”

  Jim says no, that might not be a good idea, that the folks in those parts had gotten sorta attached to the thing. He said they even named
it, called it the Pacific or some such.

  “Heck,” I says, “it’s no bigger than that lake up by Duluth! They gave that thing a snooty name, too—Superior, I think. Bud says in three, four days he coulda had that lake dry as a stove top. Probably could raise a heckuva crop down in there once a guy got it plowed. But folks up there wouldn’t let him do it!”

  Jim pointed out that the land here wouldn’t be much good anyhow since the water in the slough was all salty. I thought about it a minute, then got an idea.

  “Say, Jim, once you got it plowed, just plant it to peanuts! They’ll come out of the ground salty, but that’s how folks like them anyway!”

  Just then, a couple of young gals came running along tossing a Frisbee back and forth. They musta got hot from running and giggling so much, and they started peeling off their sweat clothes. To my relief, they had swimsuits on underneath, but just barely. Those swimsuits were so skimpy that if you put them together, you could maybe wad a shotgun. While they splashed and giggled, I glanced around to see if there was a constable nearby. I was sure those gals was violating some ordinance, but since there was no cop around it looked like they would get away with it.

  After a while the girls got tired, I guess, and spread towels out on the sand and laid down on them. I saw one gal slip her shoulder straps down and Jim said later that was so she wouldn’t get tan lines there. I wish I had such things to worry about. On the way home, I says to Jim, “Ya know, maybe we should leave that slough alone. It’s kind of a scenic place and I’d hate to spoil it.” Jim agreed.

  “How long do you reckon that water has stood there anyway, Jim?” He said he didn’t know for sure, probably 250 million years or so.

  “Well, there you go!” I said. “ Everybody knows when the water stands more than a couple of years, it makes it harder than heck to plow. I think we’ll leave it be.”

  Well, I’d better go. The weather service is predicting rain (again!) and our cattle yard is so wet, I’m thinking we’ll soon have to buy scuba gear for the cows. I’ll call you later about those cattails. •

  Part 2

  How to Raise Farm-Fresh Kids in Twenty-Five Years or Less!

  Labor and Delivery

  An acquaintance of mine recently became a daddy for the first time. He talked about how the whole thing was some kind of moving, mystical experience. “Heck,” I told him, “come back after you’ve been in on a couple hundred of those sacred events! They lose their charm after a dozen or so.”

  I was referring, of course, to livestock births.

  When my wife became pregnant with our first child, I was forced into participating in something called “Lamaze” class. The alternative involved me sleeping on the couch. This is no fun, especially when you own a secondhand couch that has more lumps than a bag of potatoes.

  I could see why they called it Lamaze right from the start. For one thing, I was L’amazed that the class set me back twenty bucks. The purpose of the class was also amazingly stupid. We were supposed to learn how to breathe. How many people do you know that don’t already possess this skill? None, right?

  During the class, we were to be instructed on how to give birth. I had never once seen a cow in such a class. And so what if birthing can be difficult? Haven’t those people ever heard of calf pullers? I pretty much knew all about that birthing stuff anyway. I’m pretty sure I could have taught the class myself. “Okay, class, listen up! When the time comes, the mama bellows and grunts until the baby comes out. If she has trouble, you can call the vet . . . I mean, the doc. Then she cleans it up while you have a beer. Any questions? That’ll be twenty bucks, please.”

  Our class instructor turned out to be one of those high-strung “I know more than you so sit down and shut up” types. I think she sensed my resentment at being there (probably because I napped during the training films) and went out of her way to try to embarrass me.

  During one session, she mentioned that the moms-to-be would probably hear horror stories from well-meaning friends and relatives about weeklong labors, babies coming out sideways, etc. Several ladies nodded, indicating that they had already heard such things.

  “Shoot,” I said, “I’ve been in on so many deliveries, I could tell you a few war stories myself.”

  The teacher raised an eyebrow and sneered at me like an executioner. “Perhaps you’d like to share one since you consider yourself such an expert.”

  “Well, okay,” I began, “one time, I was doing my chores, and when I looked in the barn, I spied a new mom and her baby.”

  “Poor homeless people,” murmured one of the gals.

  I went on. “Well, the mother had cleaned the baby and was already nursing, so I—”

  “I’m going to nurse, too,” interjected another gal. “Natural is the only way.”

  I tried to continue. “So anyway, when I finished my chores I peeked in on her again and she had prolapsed.”

  The teacher became noticeably pale. “What’s prolapsed?” asked one of the students.

  “She had sort of coughed out her uterus.” I saw several women wince in empathy. “So I called the doc right away and when he got there we lassoed her and tied her down—”

  “You what?” said one of the ladies.

  “Well, she wasn’t going to let us help her. I guess she was scared for her baby.”

  The gals nodded with understanding. “The poor thing. I bet she couldn’t speak a word of English, either.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty much a given.” I noticed that the teacher was beginning to sway slightly. “Doc musta worked a half hour to get it all stuffed back in. He was real fussy, said he wanted to make sure there were no twists or wrinkles. Man, he had his arm in clear up to his shoulder, but that wasn’t good enough, so he takes this quart pop bottle to use as an extension and he—”

  My narrative was interrupted by a loud THUNK. The teacher had fainted dead away.

  Class got out early that day. On the drive home, the wife chewed me out. “You should have told them you were talking about a cow. Sheesh! I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  “Yeah, but think of how the teacher felt. Did you see how her eyes rolled back? I was gonna shout ‘TIMBER’ but it was too late.”

  I was pretty sure we’d get an F in the class but it turned out we weren’t even graded. I really didn’t learn much new anyway. That is, not until the Big Event came.

  Labor is a poor choice of a label for what goes on prior to delivery. It should really be called boredom. Hours and hours of hanging around a hospital room with a very pregnant (and often crabby) woman is not most guys’ idea of a good time. But I was fully prepared for this contingency during the birth of our first child: I brought a deck of cards. Shuffling the deck, I said, “Hey, honey. How ’bout a game of strip poker?”

  “No,” she snapped. “That’s how all this started, remember? Besides, it wouldn’t be fair, since all I’m wearing is this stupid hospital gown.”

  A nurse breezed into the room to check on things. Glancing at her name tag, I asked, “Hey, um, Nancy, how about a game of Texas Hold’em? By the way, are those shoes you wearing Reeboks? What size are they?”

  My wife tried to hit me upside the head with a book of baby names. Luckily, she missed and was restrained from grabbing me due to all the tubes and monitors that were connected to her. I sought safety in a far corner.

  After the nurse left, my wife asked innocently, “Would you check on this IV thing? I’m not sure if it’s working.” Eager to finally be of some use, I did as asked, and WHACK. She hit me upside the head with the IV pole. I couldn’t believe that I fell for that old “check my IV for me” trick.

  Morning dragged on into afternoon. Time seemed to stand still. I became so desperate for entertainment that I began sneaking peeks at a Clint Eastwood movie that was playing on a TV mounted high in one corner of the room. I had to be careful about watchi
ng TV, though; my wife wouldn’t have liked my being distracted from the Big Event.

  The nurse started to come in more and more often to check on progress. “How are we doing?” asked Nancy as she entered the room.

  “Shh!” I said. “This is the exciting part! You see, Dirty Harry has the bad guy cornered, and I don’t know if he’s shot five times or six. I tried to count, but SOMEBODY”—I glared at my wife meaningfully—“decided to have a really noisy contraction just then.”

  It was at last determined that the time for delivery was very close. Nancy asked my wife, “Do you feel pushy?”

  “When doesn’t she?” I retorted. (I had long since safely moved all throwable items from my wife’s reach.)

  When the birth was finally at hand, I was told to dress in green scrubs and was admitted to the holiest of holies, the Delivery Room. The place was quite impressive. There were shiny electronic doodads and blinking thingamabobs everywhere. In the center of it all sat the delivery table, a tribute to modern stainless steel architecture. Imagine if a million years from now, an archaeologist discovers such a room: “This apparently was their torture chamber. Notice the metal instruments, both blunt and sharp, employed to inflict pain. See also the electronic equipment used to quantify the poor soul’s discomfort. These were truly a barbaric people.”

  The atmosphere in the room grew tense as the minutes ticked by. I got the feeling that things weren’t moving along as expected. I stood by, ready and able to be of service based on my experience with numerous farm animal deliveries. There seemed to be plenty of assistants, so I tried to lighten things up with anecdotes of some of the farm births I had witnessed.

  “Yeah, I remember once when Dad hooked our John Deere B onto a calf that wouldn’t come out, and he dragged that cow all over the place. And then there was that time the vet was doing a C-section on a cow and she busted out of her stanchion and we had to chase her down. What a mess THAT was. So anyway, the cow was running and Dad and I had to—”