The City Farmer
Rufus Quagmire was in a state of jubilation, as he closed the deal on a 200 acre farm, which was located at a point where the foothills of the Ozarks drops off to the flat lands in the south end of Bollinger County Missouri. About 40 acres of this farm was a timber-covered hill and the other 160 acres was good, flat, tillable land.
This farm was in a rather dilapidated condition, as it had been neglected during the settlement of an estate, but this situation didn't seem to bother Rufus to any great extent, as he had great plans about how he was going to get rich as a farmer. At age 49, he had spent his entire life in the big city. For twenty years of that time, he had been a professor of economics at the local college, but now he was going to get out of the big city grind, move to the country, and become a gentleman farmer.
Rufus had his plans already outlined in a notebook, which he was going to use as a guide to successfully operate this farm. He had it all written down, as to the various crops he was going to plant, even to the extent that he had entered the exact planting dates for each crop, and how each crop was to be cultivated, as well as to when it should be harvested.
He would show those clod-hoppers how it was done. It all seemed so simple and easy, while he was 50 miles from any corn field, and he was doing his farming with a pencil. He had most everything figured out; however, there were a few things he was not sure of, but he could go to the County Farm Agent for answers to the very few things he didn't already know.
For instance, he was not sure as to whether he should let his turnips hang on the tree until they matured or should he pick them before they fell to the ground.
He had made a note in his book to be sure and ask the county farm agent, as to whether his eggplants would need to be incubated in a good warm place or would these eggplants hatch by themselves out in the row. Then there was the cauliflower. Should they be handled along the same line as long stem roses, or were they more like petunias?
Rufus knew that he should never plant a row of potatoes near a row of onions, as the onions would get in the potato eyes and retard their growth.
Rufus had always liked honey, so he decided to produce some of this sweet stuff by planting a bed of honeysuckle on one side of his driveway. In order to balance the landscape, he would plant a bed of oysters on the other side.
Another note Rufus had made was to contact an insurance agent to see if he should buy a policy to protect himself against the possibility of the fireflies setting fire to his timber land.
Regarding his farm machinery, Rufus wondered what the difference was between a "harrow" and a "furrow."
One of his jocular farm neighbors had told Rufus that there were several "mug wumps" nesting on his lower forty. The neighbor said that these were very rare birds and should be protected at any cost, so Rufus made a special trip to the farm extension office to inquire about this bird.
By this time, the farm community as a whole had agreed that if the old axiom "Ignorance is bliss" holds true, then Rufus was undoubtedly living a totally blissful life. Therefore, the farm agent was very cooperative in the matter of providing information pertaining to this bird. He told Rufus that this mug wump was, indeed a very rare bird, and that he would be able to recognize the bird, due the fact that he would usually find it perched on a barbed wire fence, with its "mug" on one side of the fence and its "wump" on the other.
Comments
- -- Posted by TNMom2 on Tue, Feb 26, 2013, at 10:49 PM
- -- Posted by Dexterite1 on Wed, Feb 27, 2013, at 6:11 AM
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