From the key drive

More vintage Farm Side from 07. I called this one...

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Dances with Barn Cats

Here in tropical Fultonville we have discovered a phenomenal new reward activity— taking the kids to the movies. It’s astounding. They can milk the whole string, feed the calves, scrape the floors, toss down hay, take out the feeder wagon and get showered and dressed in under two hours if we tell them we are going. I love it.

After a highly enjoyable viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean (The Black Pearl) about a week ago I had a revolutionary idea. What if movies were filmed with farmers in mind? For example, Kevin Costner might star in Dances with Barn Cats. Our hero could be struggling through his milkhouse door, calf pails on one arm and a half a dozen nipple bottles dangling from the straining fingers of the other. Suddenly a calico cavalry would arrive to twine around his legs, yowling melodically. The resulting shuffle-stomp, as the farmer strives to maintain his balance in a veritable sea of cats, would be poetry in motion (especially from the viewpoint of his chortling children). We could watch in fascination as man and feline stagger along the almost endless prairie of the aisle behind the cows, until in final triumph he manages to pour some milk in the cats’ dish, ending hostilities and silencing the howling horde.

In the farmer-friendly comedy/thriller, Pirates of the Cornfield (the Black Squirrel) we would find handsome Jonny Dep battling for possession of thousands of ears of sweet corn. Instead of the horrible fleshless zombies from the real movie he would be facing raccoons (with rings around their eyes, just like his own), turkeys (with beards to match his), white-tailed deer, and a rare mutant black squirrel, who leads them all with a sort of depraved charm. His trusty John Deere would give new meaning to the word, “swashbuckling”, as he races to pick corn faster than the varmints. Instead of falling dramatically into the ocean for a grand finale, he could disappear into the corn stalks like the ball players in….

Field of Sheep. In this rustic attraction, we will observe our hero trying to build a sheep farm near a large town in Iowa. He will be ridiculed and harassed by his urban neighbors as he fences pastures and builds a lambing shed. His family and his banker will scoff at his efforts. Instead of Moonlight Graham, his county extension agent will help save the day by demonstrating that sheep make good neighbors. His local Farm Bureau will take the place of the antique ball team in convincing his opponents.

Agriculture will prevail as he overcomes restraining orders, animal rights protesters and the Environmental Protection Agency to build a farm near a town. In the triumphant ending we will see him delivering lambs in his brand new lambing shed as his neighbors, won over by careful public relations work, watch in awe. If you build it they will come.

Our next farmer friendly movie will be Lord of the Strings. This three-film epic will gradually reveal the many ways that bale strings can be both the bane and saving grace of the farmer’s existence.

The first section of the story will find our faithful farmer repairing fence with a length of pinkish orange plastic twine that he discovered after tripping over it where it was buried in the lane.

During the second portion of our action thriller he will save hours of time bringing a new calf in from the field with a bit of hay rope, rather than going back to the barn for a halter or the calf crate.

This Christmas the third segment will be released and we will discover what other revolutionary use he has found for this ubiquitous farm tool. Rumor on the Lord of the Strings website says that it may be erosion control on creek banks.

Here in the real world of Northview Dairy, far from Hollywood’s glittering lights (but real close to those of the Speedway), we recently had a close encounter of the marsupial kind. It is still causing wrinkles in the fabric of our family life. Last Saturday along about nine PM, Liz’s dog, Gael, began to yip in her crate. I roused myself from a piteous stupor in front of the TV (I was sick) and ordered our eldest to take the darn dog out.

Suddenly shrieks erupted from the area of the back porch. The rest of the crew raced to the kitchen. They found Liz on the porch standing on the seat that the boss bought last spring for the skid steer (no, it hasn’t been installed yet, something about having to take the whole cab off to put it in). The seat was on top of a trashcan where the kids keep ball gloves and the tie chains for the show cows (don’t ask me, I’m not a kid). Liz was sort of hovering near the ceiling in a gibbering frenzy, so incoherent that it took several minutes to discover what had happened. Seems that just as she stepped outside a possum that had been raiding the cat dish ran over her bare feet. To hear her tell it the wretched thing was the size of Moscow. “I could feel its claws right through my socks,” she wailed.

That was about the last time she spoke to any of us because we had the audacity to find the whole episode funny. The more we laughed the madder she got.

She then turned to her friends at school for a bit of sympathy over her traumatic experience. Surely they would understand. Of course they did. Now whenever she walks down the hall, someone is sure to point at her feet and cry out, “Possum.”