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Humor goes with grit By Mitch Jayne
My friend Lester, an Ozark farmer who owns over a section of land, still keeps adding to it. Since he has been tacking on acreage for 50 years now, I kidded him once, asking if he wanted to own the world. He said, “Oh no, I don’t want all that much land, only what joins me.”
That was one of those impossible Ozark exaggerations that could have him eventually owning rural Missouri, and we both knew how funny the idea was. It reminded me that half of the humor I’ve saved over the years came from farm people, which says a lot for the good nature that comes with that lifestyle.
As an old feedlot calf raiser told me years ago, “I never laughed at myself much, until I got to watching tumble bugs and realized I was basically in the same business as an insect.”
I remember a farm boy banjo picker I met in Nashville. He was telling people about his dad who had raised hogs over good and bad years. His dad had just received the largest check he had ever seen.
The picker said his dad drove his old truck into a filling station and told the attendant, “Fill her up, and while you’re at it, spill a few gallons out on the ground. This is the first time I ever had wastin’ money!”
That kind of exaggeration reminds me of my old ex-moonshiner friend who, first hearing about using corn for ethanol, said, “Heck, I was starting people’s motors with corn juice back before Democrats got invented!”
Trust a farmer, who is close to the guesswork nature of weather and the complex nature of markets, to understand that a sense of humor is as important as grit and patience when it comes to making a living off the land.
This comes out in statements like the one my neighbor Walter made about his dairy farm back in the 80s. “Well, I didn’t lose enough to quit last year,” he said, “but I didn’t make enough to call it a business either. I told my tax feller to list me as an ‘assisted living for cows’ home.”
When I laughed and said I didn’t think the IRS would go for it, he looked very wise. “They will if there’s a farm boy in that bunch,” he said. “They’ll know that a Holstein cow is an animal that will walk around for 30 years just looking for a place to die.”
Maybe what my friend Lester has in mind with his ever-growing farm is something like that. Animals can wander all they want, but at least they’ll do it where he can keep an eye on them.
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