Dear County Agent Guy

by Jerry Nelson

  We would walk into our farm’s shelterbelt and be instantly transformed. Sometimes we were fearless hunters, tracking tigers and lions through an unmapped jungle. Other times, we were the last of a contingent of French Foreign Legionnaires, locked in a desperate battle with bloodthirsty invaders who were intent on taking our fort. My favorite game, though, was playing Pirates.

  I was always the Pirate Captain, and my brothers were co–First Mates. (Being the oldest had its advantages. To keep the peace, I secretly promised each of them that if the other were killed in action, he would become full First Mate.)

  “Aarrg, ye scurvy dogs!” I would bellow. “Weigh anchor! Hoist the mainsail! Watch that jib! Hard to port! Steady, lads, or we’ll run aground! Aarrg!” Talking like a pirate captain was the best part of being Pirate Captain.

  Inevitably, we would be struck by a storm of such fury that a hurricane would seem like a tempest in a bathtub by comparison. Despite my heroic efforts at piloting our vessel, we would become shipwrecked and be marooned on a remote, uncharted island.

  As we hacked our way through the island’s steamy jungle, the crew might begin to grumble about the lack of rations. Just when I feared that mutiny could be imminent, we would stumble upon a small clearing where sat a farmer’s hovel. Outside the farmhouse, a woman was hanging clothes on a line. What luck!

  The crew might speak excitedly of plundering the farmhouse for silver and gold. I would tell them, “Nay, lads, these simple folk would have no such treasure. But see yon wench? What say we take her captive and make her do the one thing that all pirates dream of during those long months at sea!”

  The crew gasped. “You mean . . . ?”

  “That’s right, laddies! We’ll force her to whip up a batch of Rice Krispies Treats! Are ye with me? Then draw your cutlasses and . . . charge!!”

  We burst from the jungle and quickly surrounded our surprised mother. “Aarrg! We be the wickedest pirates what ever sailed the seven seas! Get out the marshmallows or ye’ll walk the plank!”

  Mom would pause from her clothes hanging. “Put down those sticks before you hurt somebody!” she would admonish. “And go inside and wash your hands. How could you boys get so dirty in such a short time?”

  Being a Pirate Captain wasn’t easy. This was especially true when your mom made you peel potatoes as punishment for breaking a light fixture.

  Somewhere out in our shelterbelt, we kids indeed found treasure, although it wasn’t anything that could be measured in dollars and cents. It was a deepened appreciation for the wealth that’s contained in all our imaginations. And also for the bequest left to us by our windblown pioneers. •

  Of Silos and Learjets

  It’s an onerous job, climbing the silo to set the silo unloader back up. Powdery, itchy grain dust tumbles off each rung of the ladder and swirls around inside the chute, coating the skin, getting into every orifice. The wind is never in the right direction on the days when you have to climb the silo.

  This day is no exception and I climb the ladder with my eyes closed most of the way. At the top, I turn a latch, and the door opens inward, exposing a heap of golden corn. I crawl into the silo and, now safe, peer down the chute. Fifty feet is a long way if a guy were to lose his grip and fall. The gloomy metal chute is a vertical train tunnel; a bright patch of sunlight at the bottom is the locomotive’s headlamp.

  I set to work, sinking knee-deep into the loose grain as I put the silo unloader back into its operating position. The cavernous silo roof catches sound and amplifies it: Far off in the distance, I can hear the receding drone of a small airplane. And I think about what I had just heard on the news.

  At that very moment, five miles up, a Learjet was streaking through the South Dakota sky on a journey that had a terrible, inevitable end. The crew appeared incapacitated, the broadcaster had intoned, and all anyone could do was watch as time and fuel ran out. Pro golfer Payne Stewart was among those hurtling through the sky aboard the doomed Learjet.

  Five miles is a long way to fall.

  I climb back down the chute and take off my shoes to shake out the corn. I know that each glistening yellow kernel represents both life and death: Moisten these seeds and they will sprout, bringing forth new life. A life that was made possible only through the death of the parent plant. I flip a switch, sending power up to the silo unloader’s electric motor. The unloader sounds strangely distant up there at its highest altitude.

  I give the unloader’s winch a few experimental cranks, spooling out a tiny bit of cable. The unloader emits a hollow moan. No corn comes down the chute for some minutes. I know that the machine is scribing circles in the silo and hasn’t yet made contact with the pile of grain. Mindless motion, not unlike that of a jet flying on autopilot. I turn the winch’s crank and spool off some more cable.

  Finally, I hear a few tentative kernels pinging against the galvanized steel chute, like the first drops of a summertime rainstorm hitting a tin roof. Soon there is a surge of corn, a torrent that arrives upon frothy whitecaps of grain dust.

  And like a thunderstorm, the flow abates almost as quickly as it started. I give the winch a few more cranks and look at the spool of cable. I can tell roughly how much corn is left by the number of wraps left on the spool. I will watch these wraps carefully, as they represent the amount of time remaining before I run out of feed. Hopefully, it won’t be until next fall, when a new crop of corn will be ready to go into the silo.

  I look at the corn lying at the bottom of the chute and idly wonder how many kernels are in the silo. I’m sure it could be figured out, but I really don’t care to think about it. The ag economists say that this grain probably cost me more to raise than what I could buy it for—yet another thing I really don’t care to think about.

  I glance up at the pleasant sky and check my watch. By now, according to the newscast, the Learjet will have run out of fuel and fallen to the earth. Six people, we will learn by day’s end, will have lost their lives in the incident.

  Sweet dreams and flying machines.

  I shut the silo unloader off and head for the house. And I muse to myself. I wonder if that golf pro woke up this morning and looked at his spool. I wonder if he smiled to himself, secure in the knowledge that he had a ton of cable left. “Go ahead!” he thought. “Give ’er a few more cranks!”

  I guess nobody ever knows exactly when they’ll run out of cable. And in the end, it really doesn’t matter if you were up fifty feet or five miles. •

  What’s in a Cow’s Name?

  “Cows may come and cows may go, but the bull goes on forever.”

  That old adage may ring true for some, especially in view of the lengthy sessions held at local coffee shops and feed stores. But any cattle person worth his or her salt block knows that in the real world, the exact opposite is the case: Bulls come and go, but cows are the bedrock of bovine society. In fact, a cow may last longer than a marriage nowadays, which means that the relationship between a farmer and a cow could qualify as “long-term.”

  As such, cows are often named. Some of these names are none too flattering. When I was a kid, Dad, who was the official cow-namer on our farm, bestowed such monikers as “Camel” (her face looked just like a dromedary’s), “Ma’s Cow” (which came out sounding as “Moscow”), and “That Durned White Biddy” (pretty self-explanatory).

  But perhaps the most memorable cow Dad named was the one that he called C.C.

  A name such as “C.C.” is a pretty strange moniker for a Holstein cow. But it rolled off the tongue a lot easier than “Differently Abled Domesticated Mature Female Bovine.”

  C.C. started out as just another Holstein heifer in our herd. This all changed when she gave birth to her first calf, a difficult delivery that required massive amounts of assistance. The ordeal left C.C. partially paralyzed.

  The outlook for a “downer” cow is generally grim. Future employment prospects are lim
ited to such things as working at McDonald’s—and I don’t mean as a cashier.

  But Dad must have sensed that there was something different about C.C. He resolved to do whatever it took to save her. I guess you could say he had compassion for the cow and also wanted to conserve her. So it was that we kids, who got the job of carrying feed and water to C.C., were exposed early on to that much-ballyhooed “compassionate conservatism.”

  C.C. thrived on all the attention. She ate like a horse and slowly but surely recovered her strength, eventually regaining her ability to walk. It was a glad day when she rejoined the herd, mostly because we were sick and tired of providing room service for a cow.

  We pretty much forgot about C.C., but she obviously never forgot about us. When C.C. calved again, she was put into our stanchion barn to be milked. That is when her fondness for people came to light.

  Whenever you bent over to prep C.C.’s udder, you would suddenly experience a rough, scrubbing sensation on your rump as C.C. enthusiastically licked your heinie. Such was her gusto that she would nearly hoist you off the ground with her tongue. She also had a penchant for nosing your shirt up and licking the bare skin beneath. It felt as though you were being scoured with slobbery sandpaper.

  C.C.’s outstanding people skills didn’t end there. If a person were to take a stroll across the cattle yard, C.C. would trot over to provide an escort. And if a dog was nearby, he’d best watch out: C.C. hated dogs.

  I discovered C.C.’s animosity toward canines one spring morning when I was herding our milk cows into our stanchion barn. Our farm dog was hanging around nearby, superintending things with a vacant expression on his face. Without warning, a thousand-pound black-and-white missile shot from the herd and streaked toward the dog. The canine wisely beat a swift retreat. Yelping and whining, he leaped through the fence to safety. C.C., satisfied with this outcome, trotted over to me and began to lick my shoulder. She wouldn’t leave even after I physically tried to shove her away. From then on, she would only enter the barn if she was walking beside a human. C.C. no doubt believed that she needed to “protect” us from that despicable dog.

  I took advantage of this knowledge once when a buddy came over for a visit. He and I and our farm mutt were walking out to the field when I innocently suggested that we take a shortcut across the cattle yard.

  We were tiptoeing through the cow pies when C.C. spied us. She came galloping down the hill at such a speed that my buddy judged us to be in mortal danger. He strongly urged that we get while the getting was good.

  “Naw,” I said. “Let’s just stand here a minute.”

  C.C. thundered toward us. At the last possible milli­second, she swerved for the dog, who instinctively high­tailed it for the fence. The victorious C.C. then trotted back and stood close by and mooed at us with motherly affection.

  “Wow!” said my buddy. “She’s quite a cow!”

  “That’s nothing,” I said. “Bend over beside her like you’re gonna milk her. And hike up your shirt just a bit.”

  Among all cows I have known, C.C. was by far the most human. As a downer, she shouldn’t have survived for more than a few days, but during her many years in our milking herd, C.C. repaid our kindness by being a shining example of gratitude and affection. And also by scrubbing us as often as possible with the slobbery tongue of motherly devotion. •

  A Dog Named Sam

  A horde of growling bulldozers and dinosaur-like excavators have carved streets into the farmland that once was the east half of Section 2, Medary Township, Brookings County—the farm otherwise known as the Old Revell Place.

  What would be my interest in this example of inexorable urbanization? None, really, except that that was the farmstead where, many years ago, I launched my farming career.

  As I drove past the Old Revell Place recently, I mused how ironic it is that developers choose names that describe the very things they destroy. I guess labels like “Pheasant’s Nest” or “Prairie Vista” make for easier selling.

  And I also wondered. I wondered if I should tell the developer how the soil next to the draw consists of a foot of black dirt, beneath which is a layer of “sugar sand” that can swallow a tractor or a combine in a single gulp. I wondered if I should tell them how that land down east tends to flood after heavy rains.

  Needless to say, the Old Revell Place holds a lot of memories for me. That rickety house that could never seem to keep out the chill winter winds. The old barn with its cobbled-together milking facilities. But perhaps some of the fondest memories I have are those of Sam.

  Shortly after I moved into the Old Revell Place and acquired some dairy cows, I discovered one of the farm’s most glaring faults: the fences. The combination of long-necked Holsteins and barbwire that belonged in a museum proved to be a constant headache. And so I hired Sam, my first blue heeler dog. He was nothing but a pudgy ball of grayish fur when he came to live with me. The pup and I soon became inseparable.

  It wasn’t long before Sam began to help me with milking. He would carefully watch the cows as they exited the milking parlor, sneaking up on them and nipping their heels just as they rounded the corner. I quickly found that owning a blue heeler was very similar to having another person with you at all times. Sam was always hanging around, watching whatever I was doing, seemingly worried that he might be missing out on something.

  And he was a smart dog. For instance, I might be wrestling with a reluctant disk bearing when I would glance up and see Sam standing there, watching me. “What do you think, Sam?” I might ask, and—you may not believe this—Sam would run off and chase a rabbit! There could be no doubt that he was trying to metaphorically empathize with this futile struggle called “farming.”

  Sam grew up to be a supreme cattle dog. I had a big (2,200-pound) and mean Holstein bull who had learned how to fiddle with the gate until it became unhitched and swung open. He would then lead his harem on a foray across the farmstead, usually homing in on the garden so they could use their sharp hooves to trample our tender vegetable plants. Those who think that cattle can’t think should watch a bunch of cows who are bent on maximizing their owner’s irritation.

  If I saw that the bull was working on the gate, I would call for Sam, kneel by his side, and whisper, “See that bull, Sam? Go get ’im!” Sam loved this. He would creep down to the barn, sneak around the corner, and nip the bull on the nose. The bull would turn tail and run; Sam would give chase, bloodying the bull’s heels. Sam and I both enjoyed this immensely.

  When our first son was born, we worried how Sam might react to this newcomer. We needn’t have; Sam claimed the baby like he was one of the pack. When my wife went out to get the mail, she would often take along the baby in the stroller, and Sam would walk alongside as if he were the official guardian. Aside from his rabbit hunting, these were the only occasions when Sam would leave my side.

  One fateful day, I discovered that my feeder calves had escaped from their pen. I called for Sam and commanded him to “Sic ’em!” I left the dog to attend to the calf-chasing and went to fetch my fence-repair tools.

  When I got back, the calves were walking about nonchalantly instead of galloping for the safety of their pen. Where was the fifty-pound canine demon that should have been nipping at their heels? Strange. I called for Sam. Nothing. I walked down the fence line, and there he was. Sam was stretched out on the sod, motionless, looking as if he had been frozen in midstride. An unlucky kick from one of the calves must have broken his neck.

  My wife and I buried him on the spot just as one might bury a fallen soldier on the field of battle. My son couldn’t understand why we were doing this to his dog. My wife cried. I tried not to.

  Tidy rows of houses have sprouted where I once grew rows of corn and beans. Someday soon, a bulldozer will wipe away all the remaining traces of those old fences that I struggled so mightily to maintain. Perhaps the dozer operator will spot a small smattering of b
ones and wonder whatever it was that might have died there. Or perhaps, decades hence, some suburbanite will till his garden and uncover a strange calcium deposit.

  I wondered if I should tell the developers about these things. But then I thought: Nah. Let them find out for themselves. •

  Farm Corporate Jargon

  Farm magazines just aren’t the same as they used to be. In a bygone era, you could count on a farm magazine to supply some real “meat and potatoes” kind of literature. These days, reading a farm publication leaves you with the distinct impression that you just chowed down on a pile of rice cakes—a lot of filler, but not especially satisfying.

  I don’t blame the writers, or even the editors, of farm magazines for this sorry state of affairs. No, I place the guilt where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of Corporate America.

  In the old days, farm publications were largely mom-and-pop operations. The guy who was editor-in-chief was probably also the press operator and wore the hats of both main writer and field reporter. The lady who was in charge of writing the recipe page was probably also the proofreader and head accountant.

  The point is that these people didn’t mince words when it came to the content of their writing. They would have called a hog house a hog house, never a “swine confinement facility.”

  Sadly, much of that has changed over the past fifty years as large corporations have wrapped their profit-seeking tentacles around one farm publication after another. As a result, farm magazines have assimilated large amounts of corporate jargon into their lexicon.

  I wonder—what would things have been like if big corporations had controlled farm magazines a century ago, before farmers had radio and television to dilute the magazine’s effects? This would have been a typical conversation between a farmer and his son: