If you live on a farm, it’s important to keep your sense of humor.
I live on a farm, and I don’t even grow things, so the weather can’t ruin my day — or year — the way it can for real farmers. Still, if I didn’t keep my sense of humor, things would be a lot more grim.
Laughing is a good alternative to crying when your tractor breaks down during your final mow and you can’t repair it yourself and the only person you trust to repair it is too busy repairing other people’s larger and more numerous tractors to return your phone call. And when you think about the fact that it might cost $3000 to repair your tractor if and when he gets around to coming back.
Laughing is a good alternative when you’re about to walk out your front door and you spy a bear walking down your driveway. And then wonder what you would have said (or more likely, screamed) if you had suddenly found yourself facing him.
Laughing is a good alternative when every spring, rocks burst forth from the earth as if you had planted a crop last fall, despite the fact that you saw none before the last snow fell.
The simple fact is that unless you’ve got an almost infinite supply of time and money, you’re going to be struggling with something if you have a farm.
But there’s something that can make those struggles easier to bear — and keep you laughing. It’s the magazine called Farm Show.
It’s filled with things that farmers have invented, and which I can only imagine made them laugh when they created them. How about a dog house made from a Deere cab? Or a shed made from old wrenches? Or a self-propelled picnic table? Or a barbecue tractor? Or a rolling wire spool squeeze chute?
Every issue is jam-packed, as they say, with ridiculously clever ideas like these, and profiles of the great minds behind them. For less than the price of going to the movies and having popcorn and a soda with a friend, you can get Farm Show in your mailbox every other month. Or you can order a gift subscription, if you know someone who’s busy picking those rocks that have started to bloom again.
Reflections on Riding 
I just had to get a free copy for my husband, he’s the son of a dairy farmer so this should be right up his alley.
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That’s great. I look forward to the review.
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Oh you poor baby. It just doesn’t seem to end does it? Let’s look at the positive for a minute, it might make you smile. We live in one of the most beautiful areas in all the continental USA; in the foothills of the mountains. We are at an elevation of roughly 1300+ ft. Which gives us gorgeous blueberry and raspberry sunrises, and lavendar and peach colored sunsets. Due to the elevation, our area receives more snow than the rest of the state, which adds beneficial nutrients to the soil, creating four seasons of stunning beauty. In the spring, mother nature dresses the landscape in a haze of soft pastel colors from the many deciduous trees. Dark pink, light pink, and white Dogwood, apple, cherry, and plum. With accents of white and yellow daffodils; purple, white, and yellow crocuses; and yellow forsythia, all against a newly budding carpet of green. In the summer the rolling meadows are verdant and lush, dotted with horses and cows, and striped with New England’s ubiquitous stone walls. Autumn arrives in a riot of color, as the trees take off their green cloaks to reveal their true colors: rust; orange; yellow; gold; red and wine. Winter brings sepia tones to the mountains, as they doze in frozen sleep. Driving down from the mountains into the valley below, a light snow fall has dusted the hills, transforming them into rows of powdered chocolate donuts…..just exquisite. Dunkin Donuts has nothing on us! LOL
So after all this, hey! what’s a broken tractor and a bear or two!
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Elaine — What beautiful words and thoughts this morning. Thanks. Everything I see is part of the reason I love living here.
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I know. Go walk your beautiful meadows, that will make you feel better. I have to go shovel another 1.5 tons of concrete sand…………..
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