Prairie Ramblings

(Dysfunctional) Producer Progress Reports

By Tracy Sayler
Prairie Grains Editor
tsayler@prairieagcomm.com

There’s a farm newspaper in the area, God bless’em, that runs producer progress reports featuring progressive family farms, good apples all, in updates that summarize happenings like weather, crop development, calving, and farm work – good breezy bathroom reading. 

Here’s what might happen, however, if the producers featured in the progress reports didn’t quite turn out to be such good apples, or if circumstances ended up downright wormy…

It was a challenging growing season at the Ned Noodleman farm near Goatspee Gulch, located on heavy alkali ground on the eastern side of Wingnut County. 

“Challenging? Challenging you say? More like a year from hell,” says Noodleman, over shots of whiskey. “God, why do you hate me so?”

Noodleman explains that his crops failed, his dog died, his truck quit, his wife left him, and raccoons ate all of his sweet corn. The only bright side is that a country singer picked up on Noodleman’s woes and wrote them into a new song, “My Crops Failed, My Dog Died, My Truck Quit, My Wife Left Me, and Raccoons Ate All of My Sweet Corn.” Good luck Ned, and hopefully you can use the royalties from that country song to buy a field of four-leaf clovers, and maybe some raccoon repellent.

Murphy’s Law also seems to be the case lately over at the George McFly farm near Sludgemount. After many years of wet conditions that drowned out crop after crop, this year McFly decided to try growing rice.  Not wild rice but white rice, the type commonly served at Chinese restaurants that goes great with General Tso’s chicken. (By the way, who is General Tso, and why are we eating his chicken? If Tso is a general, shouldn’t he be out developing soldiers or something instead of orange glaze chicken recipes? Hmmm.  Guess that’s a story for another day.) 

Anyway, McFly tried growing rice this year, anticipating another wet year. Unfortunately, McFly didn’t see a drop of rain all summer, and the rice, well, it didn’t turn out so nice. 

McFly has another patch of ground where he has struggled to grow wheat because of Russian thistle problems. So instead of trying to grow wheat there, he decided to try growing Russian thistles. “Believe it or not, there’s a market for tumbleweeds,” says McFly, “for movie sets, art studios, and stupid people in big cities who buy them for landscaping.” So this year he tried cultivating Russian thistle as a field crop, but it didn’t do so well, because of competition from volunteer wheat.

Larry Bojangles, who farms near Rackanpinion, reports that he’s none too happy that his hired man up and left right during harvest. “Dirty bugger went and joined a traveling carnival. I understand he runs the tilt-a-whirl now. Hey, more power to ya, but when the guy has his fill of nine-year-olds throwing up cotton candy and corn dogs at 30 miles per hour, he shouldn’t bother to come crying back to me.” To replace his hired help, Mr. Bojangles plans to contact the Minnesota Vikings, as there should be plenty of people within that organization looking for jobs soon.

As reported in our last update, Joe Cartwrong, who ranches near Gassy Butte, has had continual problems with a neighbor’s bull jumping fences and getting in with Cartwrong’s registered herd of cattle. The issue came to a head last week.

“I’m out checking cattle and that (expletive) scrub of a bull jumps the (expletive)fence right in front of me. I happened to have the gun along at the time, so I thought enough is enough, and I shot him,” Cartwrong explains.  “So then the neighbor shows up all peeved off, and I thought enough is enough, and I shot him too.” Cartwrong currently is being held at the county jail in lieu of posting bond, and his arraignment is pending.  Um, good luck to you Joe. Hope you have a good lawyer!

Patricia “Pat” Haitguyz and life partner Samantha “Sam” Butchwald report that their new organic free-range rabbit operation near Nomansland hasn’t been going very well.  “We thought we had a good business plan, but I guess we didn’t anticipate all the coyotes,” says Haitguyz.  However, she reports that they’re not going to give up on their value-added entrepreneurialism: next year they plan to try growing hemp, which they plan to weave into baskets and sell during the next Indigo Girls concert tour.

But all are not sad sack stories.  One of the producers participating in our progress reports, Darv Zoots who farms near Hoaklee, recently sold his land to a hunt-for-fee management group. “Buncha land developers with money from the East Coast. $3,000 an acre? You can have it, and I even throw in the old Massey. Left it sit right there in the field.  So you can take your tech fees and fertilizer prices and stick it, because I’m retiring. Now my days are going to be nothing but pull tabs and cold beer down at the VFW. So long suckers!”

Finally, Hermen Sicklebar, who farms near Shamalamma, Ding Dong County, recalls an embarrassing incident that took place recently.

“We had some new neighbors move in on the vacant farmstead up the road.  Just as soon as they moved in, you could see plumes of smoke and an incredible, burning stench so awful it’s hard to put in words,” he relates.  “We suspected it might be a meth lab, so we reported them and the feds swooped in with helicopters and a bomb squad.  Turns out the new neighbors weren’t cooking meth, just lutefisk.”