Category: Humor

 

I talk to a lot of people in my daily life and I have recently come to realize how few of you have a grasp on what people are meaning when they mention “farm life”.   Depending on your age and television experience you probably envision an episode of “Little House on the Prairie” crossed with “Corner Gas”.  Myself, I have in-laws that actually own a farm in small town Saskatchewan so I get to experience some of the nuances first hand and I will tell you that only one of those TV shows is remotely accurate – and it isn’t the Ingalls.

The first trip out to the farm we made I was a little unprepared for the experience.  Frankly I had no idea.  We pulled in to the gas station of this tiny town and it looked pretty much like any gas station but looks is about where the similarities ended – this was not just a place to buy gas.  As we walked inside I realized that a larger than expected percentage of the entire town was hanging out inside.   Lawn chairs leaned back against coolers, boots scraped on the floor and heads turned as us “strangers” invaded their space.  The conversation stopped almost instantly, leaving only the sound of the Roughriders game (Saskatchewans football team) on the television.  Yes, we were enough of a spectacle to pre-empt their afternoon football game viewing.  The silence was broken by a charming little lady who politely blurted out “who do you belong to??”.  Apparently if you’re a stranger in this town you are obviously there to visit someone – there couldn’t possibly be another reason to show up unannounced.  Fortunately my wife looks enough like her mother that they quickly ascertained who us city folk were in town to see and, as my mother in law is a member in good standing of the towns friendship committee, we were suddenly greeted like long lost family.   I really just wanted a jug of milk and a Snickers bar but we were now amongst friends.  Thankfully I wasn’t wearing any sports clothing that may have had a rival team on it, these people take that stuff pretty seriously.  I promised not to make fun of their team though so I will leave it at that.

As we headed out from town to the actual farm my wife warned me about the “grid roads”.  This is the first lesson in farm life – if you want to get anywhere you will need to drive down a grid road.   These grid roads parallel each other and run straight, crisscrossing the countryside like the lines on a sheet of really large graph paper.  While that might sound like an easy and efficient way to get traffic from point A to point B, they are not without adventure.  Problem number one is that there are NO signs or road names.  None.  If you are lucky you will get directions like “go three roads past the railway tracks and take a left at the barn with the giant cock weathervane on the roof”.  (If you picture anything but a large metal rooster you have been corrupted by city life).  The road crews have developed a special coating for these grid roads that has the unique property of turning into axle grease should it rain.  This is the only place on earth where the traction is improved once it snows.  To make these roads even more fun, they also have no stop signs at the intersections and at any time you could find yourself sharing the road with a piece of farm equipment that is approximately twice the width of the road you are travelling on.  Keep your eyes open, they have the right of way. Always.  If you have to choose between going in the ditch or hitting a piece of farm equipment, take the ditch every time.  The reason is simple: if you hit the ditch the farmer will happily pull you back on to the road.  If you hit his tractor however your body will probably never be found.  I believe the farm equipment is one of the few things they take more seriously than their football team.  Don’t mess with either.

As we drove out what we hoped was the correct grid road I began to notice how flat this part of the world really is.  This brings up the third lesson: don’t joke about how flat the prairies are with the locals.  I promise you, no matter how witty you think you are, they’ve heard your joke.  A thousand times.  I would like to tell you that I used my sharp survival skill and followed the stars to ruggedly navigate my way through the wild countryside but in reality my wife has been here numerous times and she told me where to turn.  We finally arrived at the farm and moved our luggage into the bedroom that we would call home for the following four days, and then it was time to eat.  This is the next important lesson in farm life:  it is always time to eat.  The food never stops, and it is all home-cooked and natural.  It is pretty much the best part of farm life in fact. If you are used to eating three meals a day you are in for a pleasant surprise: you can have three meals down and not even hit noon.  Of course that is partially because you’ve been up for eight or nine hours already, which is another point to keep in mind on the farm:  you get up when the sun hits.  I don’t mean when the sun is way up in the sky and finally manages to break over your apartment windowsill and wake you from your date with Pamela Anderson.  I mean when the sun first peeks over the horizon, and due to the vertically challenged landscape (remember the previous rule about no flat jokes) that horizon is a loooong ways away.  I haven’t actually confirmed it but I am almost sure that the sun rises about the same time as the late news ends.  At this point you simply need to be thankful for the entire 37 minutes of sleep you received and crawl out of bed – breakfast is ready.  Truthfully, no one is sleeping through the smell of coffee and bacon anyway.

There are a few other smaller details that you should keep in mind if you are ever visiting a farm.  One of which is that the smell of poop is normal.  Now when I’m at home relaxing and watching the Voice or maybe a Star Trek rerun I will instantly investigate if I smell poop.  I would hope that you do too.  On the farm however this is a normal and very natural aroma.  Let’s be honest, cows don’t spend a lot of time worrying about where they relieve their bowels, and it is going to end up on your boots at some point.  It’s fine.  Another interesting facet of farm life is the proverbial knock on the door.  Living in the city an unexpected knock on the door causes no small amount of panic.  In fact, if a stranger knocks on your door unannounced they are undoubtedly there to kill you – there can be no other reason.  On the farm though these random visits happen all the time and when they do you instantly know it’s one of two reasons:  either your livestock got out of the fence or someone is in the ditch and needs a tow.  If your livestock wandered onto the road it could easily be both.  Either circumstance has the same result:  grab a flashlight and start the tractor.  The situation will be rectified shortly.  This will be followed by neighborly offers of cash to pay for fuel which will be met with equally neighborly refusals for compensation.  Then it’s back to the table because it is time to eat again.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, there is an even better time to be had apparently.  We have not been fortunate enough to visit the farm during an exciting period referred to simply as “calving season” but it sounds fun, and by fun I mean absolutely horrifying.  For reasons unknown to us city folk,  cows can only give birth when the temperature falls below absolute zero and even then it is preferable, in their minds at least, to drop their babies in the deep snow at 2am.  I only have this as second hand information, and I am doing my best to never have to learn first hand.  Some things are better left to the imagination and I am sure this is one of them.  If wading through snow in your pajamas to bring a calf into the house while the momma cow chases you across the yard only to sit up all night bottle feeding the calf in your bathtub sounds like a good time to you, then you possibly have what it takes to raise cows.  Me, not so much.

One final point that I feel is important to know:  fresh lettuce has bugs in it.  So do carrots.  So does virtually any produce pulled straight from the garden.  It’s natural, it’s covered in dirt and it is delicious.   We tend to forget that as we look over the vegetable aisle in our clinically sterile grocery store where everything has been sorted, washed and selected for the best looking specimens.  Fresh off the farm has that beat hands down.  Next time you are grocery shopping please take a moment and silently thank these tireless working farmers that put in so many hours to bring us the meat, diary and produce that most people just take for granted as sitting on the shelf.  It is an amazing  and unique lifestyle that very few have the dedication and character to maintain.  From sleepless nights looking after animals to fighting harsh weather to get the crops off the fields, we owe these people a debt of gratitude that can’t be understated.  If you ever have a chance to visit a farm I strongly suggest you do.  Just don’t forget to wash your boots when you get home.

 

Since I enjoy cooking I find myself in the kitchen preparing dinner quite often.  I am also very picky about the kitchen being kept in a certain semblance of order and this has resulted in the kitchen slowly becoming “mine”.  Over time, the more I pointed out any transgressions in the cleanliness rules I had arbitrarily instigated, the more “mine” the kitchen became.  I’m ok with that, although that brings us to baking.

One thing I never do is bake.  This means that my wife takes over the kitchen for the times that the sugary trades are required.  This of course is a very traumatic time for me, similar to riding with my daughters during the learner permit phase.  I sometimes find it hard to breathe.  Also of note, it is always pointed out that since I claimed the kitchen as my domain, cleanup is my problem.

Now since I don’t do the baking myself I need some help with the finer details from the experienced bakers out there.  I understand the principles but I am having trouble with the logistics.  Let’s use a simple cake for example.  I would suspect you would need a bowl and a pan.  Maybe a second bowl for icing.  Two spoons for stirring.  A measuring cup.  That’s it, right?  If you are being exact then possibly a measuring spoon as well?  Nothing to it.  Now when my wife bakes a cake I don’t think she follows the same directions that I envision.  I can usually tell when she has been baking by the pleasant aroma that hits my nose when I walk in the door.  This enjoyment is almost immediately erased by the sight of my beloved kitchen.  I am pretty sure that it would be cleaner and neater if you fed an entire kindergarten class skittles and coffee and then turned them loose with a bag of flour each, telling them they would get extra candy for every cupboard that was left empty.  I seriously didn’t know we owned that many dishes.
As I step over the piles on the floor I see two sinks stacked to overflowing with bowls, pans, cutting boards, cooling racks, spatulas, mixers and cups.  The counters are covered in towels, crumbs, sparkles, flour, toothpicks and paper plates.   The dogs are completely white and happily frolicking through the house trailing little paw prints like some strange episode of Blues Clues.

If you have a good imagination, I can best describe it like this: picture a traffic accident in which a travelling circus bus carrying 75 diabetic chimpanzees collides with a transport truck full of icing sugar… and then the firemen arrive, except instead of water their tanks are full of maple syrup.  As the monkeys fight over the powdered sugar spill the firemen frantically hose them down with syrup until a Starfritt demo truck loses its brakes and smashes into the whole mess, spewing forth utensils for the monkeys to fight with.  Now, i have been accused of exaggerating a tiny bit in the past, so perhaps that’s a wee bit too far.  Let’s scale that back to 25 monkeys.   Yeah, 25 is the right number.

Now that I have hopefully given you a basic understanding of the cleanup task I have been presented with there is one other thing you need to be made aware of:  in the middle of all of the calamity is a tiny pan of golden brown cupcakes, filled with more love than anyone ever thought possible.  And they are delicious.

We are often reminded of how commercial Christmas has become.  Combine this with a longing for a simpler time and memories of childhood Christmases on the farm (and possibly an unhealthy addiction to craft fairs) and the conditions were prime for my wife to make that exciting decision: WE are going to MAKE Christmas presents and decorations this year!!  Now I will admit, my first thought was “YAY! CHEAP!”    Actually that was my only thought. Had I gotten past that initial response I may have realized her emphasis on the WE part of this plan.

The first step, of course, was to find suitable antique and vintage ideas that could be made out of materials readily available from our yard… that and any one of the 17 dollar stores in town. The ideas portion of this adventure in marriage involves a little site on the internet called “Pinterest”. If you don’t know what pinterest is, here is a brief summary: Your wife spends 237 hours on the computer and then you spend your entire summer making lawn ornaments out of stuff you previously would have taken to the dump. That’s all you need to know, trust me – its an evil site.

As the planning discussion continued on I found myself gazing out of the window at the forest, paying just enough attention to my wife’s voice to nod if the talking paused.  Somewhere between longing to be struck by lightning and wondering if I could make it out of the country before she noticed I was gone it came to me:  the easiest and cheapest commodity that we have access to is wood. Trees, to be exact.

In very short order we found ourselves scrolling through thousands of pictures of santas, snowmen, ornaments and wreaths that could be made at the expense of our friend, the tree. After pointing out to my wife that there would be stumpage fees, permits and possibly a federal environmental review required to harvest enough wood to finish this project list, WE were able to narrow the list down and avoid clearcutting our entire yard. You will note I keep using the term “WE”. This points out how much involvement I had in helping, by doing what I was told, when and how I was told to do it.  Using “WE” also implies that there was so much fun to be had that it must be shared by more than one person, but perhaps “WE” could be mistaken.

Armed with my trusty chainsaw and a complete outdoor survival kit (which means I had my dog and a couple of Snickers bars) I headed out harvesting from natures craft supply store.  (Sharp readers may notice the subtle change from “we” to “I” now that the hard work has begun, but I see no reason to elaborate on that).   For those safety conscious friends of mine, rest easy – we had a comprehensive safety plan in place including check in times, GPS tracking and route planning.  Apparently she wanted to know immediately should anything bad happen while I was out harvesting.  Whether this was genuine concern for my well-being or simply for insurance purposes has yet to be determined. I assured her that I am a complete chainsaw expert however, so I can only assume she was worried that I may run across one of the Werewolves or Chupacabras that have been known to frequent our property. It did not take me long at all to have stacks of logs all over the yard, branches in the garage and strips of bark in my closet.

We are now in a “rest period” of sorts where we get to admire the collection of potential projects without actually building any projects.   I cannot wait until the final days before Christmas when we can stay up all night frantically playing adult arts and crafts after a month of setting records in procrastination.  I am envisioning a hot glue gun massacre that may well go down in history.  As with most of these situations, the full details will be available in the court transcripts.  If it comes to this, let it be known that I have absolutely ZERO intention of strangling myself with ribbon, even if the investigators claim it looks accidental or self-inflicted.

So far, the number of hours spent on this fun “together” time project has been quite astounding. In fact, I worked out the math and it may have been simpler to put that amount of time into a minimum wage job and just buy everybody a car. Apparently that is not “the spirit” though, so I hope you enjoy your wooden snowman as much.

Well I tried some new shampoo. The label sucked me in. “from a land Down Under” it said. With kiwis and koalas pictured on it, who could resist? They gotta know hair, right? Plus at $1.79 for 2000 milliliters how could I go wrong? Well – I did go wrong. Horribly horribly wrong. Apparently the smiling koala in the picture was happy because he had just had a bowel movement into a green pump bottle to ship to Canada. The label says 95% biodegradable. It fails to mention that the other 5% is apparently used engine oil and toxic waste. In 5000 years archaeologists will find the contaminated soil and think there was a nuclear reactor on our property, I’m sure. Check the ingredients. #1 Aqua. Awesome. Wait, that’s just water. Hmmm. Then a list of unpronounceable chemicals. Great. That must be part of the “all natural”. Ah here is a word I recognize: “glycol” about fourth on the list. For those of you who are unaware, glycol is the primary base of the coolant inside the engine of your car. This is all starting to make sense now. I honestly think my hair would have come cleaner if I had actually gone to the garage and used antifreeze and engine oil but we shall carry on. Another list of chemicals and oh! There it is, right near the end! Kiwi seed extract! So just as this swill was about to be sealed up someone obviously threw a handful of rotten kiwi seeds into the pot to get the marketing rights sewn up. I can only hope that there was no animal testing done as I can’t imagine a room full of screaming koalas running around with the hair burnt off of their tender pink skin while some mad scientist yells “do it AGAIN – it says ‘repeat as necessary'”. (I envision that in a german accent, don’t ask me why). Fortunately I do not have a lot of investment capital tied up in this little experiment so I will not need to ask for disaster assistance funding. I think perhaps I will try it as an engine degreaser on the truck or to perhaps to remove belt dust from the clutches on a snowmobile. On second thought I better not, it might eat aluminum. Bah.

I love apples.  I really do.  So when it was decided that we should put a couple of fruit trees in our yard I immediately voted “apple!”.  Since my vote seems to carry a bit of weight sometimes, I further extended my influence to say “GOOD apples”.  I do not want any of those little balls of sour moose-turd flavoured “crab” apples littering up my lawn.  I want something delicious and worthy of the glorious apple name – like the ones that Saveon Foods grows in the warehouse.
Finally after much debate the votes were tallied and I was excited to learn that my apple vision had won out over lesser fruit hopefuls such as pears or plums: I was moving closer to my apple farming dream!  First step was obviously to buy an apple tree – no wait, we need two.  Apparently baby apples need a mommy and daddy tree.  Who knew?  Now I had to decide which two trees would be suitable, like some kind of strange organic matchmaker dating service.  I studied the pictures and descriptions on the tags and tried to envision their personalities but I have no idea what would make one apple tree attractive to another so it was mostly a guess.  Really all I had to go on was size and taste so it was hard to plan a deep relationship between the two – truth be told, a proverbial one night stand would suffice but I’m a romantic.
I proudly planted our new trees at what we figured was a proper distance – close enough to procreate but with enough space to hopefully not smother each other.  I wanted them to have a happy marriage.  Now I just had to wait – by next year I would be sitting on a giant pile of apples, like Scrooge McDuck with his money.
The following spring finally came and I waited for the leaves to bud and the apple blossoms to form… except they didn’t.   One of my two beautiful trees stayed grey and bare.  Apparently I had failed as a matchmaker and one of my trees decided death was preferable to creating juicy, delicious offspring with the partner I had selected for it.  Off to the grocery store I went to buy a bag of apples, while I contemplated this tragic turn of events.  The remaining tree was doing great although I couldn’t tell if it was actually joyous over the recent passing of its partner or if it was in deep despair and simply over compensating in an attempt to hide it’s depression.  Or perhaps I was over thinking the situation, but I doubt it.
Back I went to find a replacement tree, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t be too late for this growing season.  It was starting to seem like an awful long time since I had first dreamed of a mighty two tree orchard to keep my apple cravings satisfied and honestly some of the excitement had worn off.  There was a lot less time spent selecting a mate this time.  Their happiness mattered less and less to me by now so I picked a tree that looked cheap and easy.  I absolutely will never tell what I considered to be the parameters for this decision.
After a brief memorial ceremony that involved the fire pit and a match, the old tree was laid to rest and the new tree was in place, ready to do its thing.  It was a waiting game again.  The new tree had previously set blooms so I was told not to expect anything from this year.  Darn – another wasted season.  Luck was on my side however as one little bloom somehow managed to survive the move and hang on, slowly growing into a magnificent specimen of apple greatness.  The young tree was, of course, not ready to support this baby and the branch was pulled down in a horrifying bend reminiscent of the lone Christmas ornament on the Charlie Brown tree.  It seemed to grow slowly, likely because I checked on it several times a day, but my single lonely apple finally became ripe enough to pick and eat – and it was delicious!  I have to say that this was undoubtedly the most delightful apple I have ever tasted, and so it should be as I have totalled the costs of the original trees with the replacement tree and the trips to the store, fertilizer, dirt, stakes etc at a little over $300.  Since the average apple weighs about 150 grams this would put my apples value at approximately  $2100.00 per kilogram.  Or $140 per bite.   Take that, caviar!  I figure that has to be close to the most expensive apple in the world but I haven’t looked into it further. I am still waiting for Guinness to return my call.

As a side note,  it did not occur to me until later that the blossom was already present when I brought the replacement tree home which means my other tree was not even a part of producing this apple – but it seemed proud anyway.  Maybe it doesn’t know.

After watching and helping with this fun project called “canning” I have taken the liberty of making some notes that may help others get the most enjoyment possible out of this experience.  To start with, you need to go out in the bush and gather up your base stock for your jelly.   Anything you can think of will work apparently.  Berries are the most traditional but whatever you can grab and carry home will work, including trees, roots, flowers and blooms.  Keep in mind that the buds or berries that no other creature on this planet will eat are, by default, very readily available.  The list of items suitable for making jams and jellies is really endless so go ahead and clean out your fridge too; old fruit, leftovers, whatever. The next step is to process your treasures to pull the natural flavour out.  I actually thought that this would be the complicated part as it requires enough tooling to make Walter Whites lab look like a kindergarten classroom, but no: after you have set up your entire kitchen like an episode of Breaking Bad you take your precious fruit and POUR BOILING WATER OVER IT.  That’s it.  The excess is strained through something called “Cheese Cloth” which, I might add, looks nothing like cheese.  It is just cloth.  If you don’t have access to magic cheese cloth simply grab that old Tshirt with the BBQ sauce stain on it and you have the same thing.  I suspect you could also strain your mixture through a fuel filter from a 72 Dodge without any problems, but I never got any say during this process so I could not test that theory. Once you have strained all of the rocks, bugs, spiders, and dirt out of your forest waste you have to pause.  Stare at it.  You must say “OOOH” and “AHHH” repeatedly at the colour.  Call the kids.  Take photos.  Whatever you have to do to celebrate and cherish this moment.  This is especially important as this is the exact moment that the fun ends. While you continue to admire and gush over the exciting colours you have invented go ahead and bring your mixture to a boil.  Once its boiling you get to add the sugar.  Now what no one tells you is that you need A LOT of sugar.  In fact you need more sugar than you are going to have finished jam. I don’t know what kind of voodoo happens at this stage but you somehow manage to fit about fifty cups of sugar into each jar.  Seriously, back the truck up.  As an added bonus, this much sugar will also cover up the taste of whatever kind of wild poisons you have boiled out of your gatherings.  Now that it has boiled, your mixture is ready to put into your jars.  You know, the ones that you forgot to sterilize while you were “OOHING” and “AHHING” at the colour?  It’s time to frantically start trying to wash them while continuing to stir your boiling sugar soup that is beginning to solidify in your pot.  Timing here is critical so don’t pause to think how organized your grandma was because she had all this crap done ahead of time, I promise you. You are finally ready to fill and cap your jars.  This part is quite boring so go ahead and smash a jar or two on the floor.  Once you are dancing around in a pool of boiling molten sugar interlaced with jagged shards of glass you will get quite an adrenalin bump.  Get a few shards stuck in your foot and it now qualifies as an extreme sport.  Don’t tell Monster Energy, they will want to sponsor this too and nobody wants a giant M on the side of their jam jar. Once the jars are filled and sealed it is time to clean up and admire your work.  Cleanup is a little tough because your jams and jellies have now set up completely solid:  On the spoons, in the pots, in the bowls, where its spilled – all of it is now cement hard.  Except for the stuff actually IN the jars.  For some reason that didn’t set up at all.   Apparently you tweaked the recipe just enough for it not to work.  No problem, this was so much fun you can look forward to doing it again.  Or just change the name from Jelly to Syrup, light the kitchen on fire and call it a day.  Who knew that gramma was a master chemist?