Re: the blessings of an idiot farmer

[Gary Woods]

ok, thanks for letting me express my ire...

Paging Mr. Guthrie...how's about another round of "Talking Dust Bowl Blues?"

[songbird]

yeah, i should put that one on.

forecast gusts as high as 48mph today. i went out to do something and the dust is still flying even if he's finally done over there. got crap in my eyes in a few moments, said the heck with it, even if it is a nice sunny and warm day.

i guess i get a day off to putter around inside. was outside most of yesterday and the day before. i sleep like a rock. wish i could say i've actually accomplished what i was hoping to work on, but no, have been sidetracked and working on that instead. :)

songbird

[Frank]

Nice living next to a farm except when they are working on it. People move out in the country then complain about the smell of farm animals. Around here there are many mushroom houses. It's hell for those near them when they clean out the mushroom house. Some days I can smell the compost pits where they make compost for them and they are over 5 miles away.

[songbird]

Frank wrote: ...

we lived a few hundred feet from a dairy farm for 14 years. that did not bother us except the year he tried to keep pigs then we (the entire neighborhood) got after him. a dairy farm smells good if they run the farm right you won't be disgusted by it.

i wonder what they are composting? in my experience you can compost almost anything and not smell it that much.

there are people in this neighborhood who have pigs. we usually don't notice them too often and while it isn't particularly a pleasant smell it's not horrid and unbearable. nothing i'd ever complain of.

i usually enjoy it here except the times when they are spraying or plowing on such windy days. none of it makes sense. the sprays don't go where they're aimed and the topsoil blows away. not that they actually have good topsoil any longer - they've turned it back to subsoil.

songbird

[Frank]

I don't mind the occasional smell of compost but it can be intense if nearby. Fire company at PA township made the composter install a bridge to help them as they were constantly putting out compost fires.

You're right about pigs. Friend had a couple and smell was not that bad but I used to bicycle a road where there were a lot of them and smell was nauseating. I also bicycled through an orchard and when they sprayed I figured anyone within a half mile would have no bug problem.

[George Shirley]

In the old days the plowing up of the land in the Great Plains caused a lot of problems as the farmers used the wrong sort of plowing devices for that sort of land.

Weatherheads are claiming we might get rain for the next two or three days. I hope they got out their JUJU dolls and did a dance before they said that.

Most of our part of Texas is the bottom of the old ocean that became the Gulf of Mexico. Then thousands of years of plants, trees etc. made it into rich soil. Unfortunately our builder put in five feet of gumbo clay to get us out of the flood zone. We are slowly adding gypsum to the land in hopes gypsum will help to turn the clay into soil as two inches of sand on top of clay hardly will support grass.

89F out there this afternoon, I don't know who invented air conditioning but thank him or her.

George

[George Shirley]

When I was a young boy I used to get twenty-five cents an hour to wave off crop dusters so they wouldn't spray past the line. Used a wet bandana over my face. Never had cancer but I have had respiratory problems for the last 65 years. I don't think the strokes and heart attacks were caused by dusting as all my male ancestors died of heart attacks.

George

[T]

When the wind blows, I water and/or kill weeds

[T]

When I was stationed in Germany, my wife and I use to love community hikes called Volks Marches.

One of British our NATO friends we use to hike with would rhapsodize over livestock pee-pee by whiffing in and proclaiming "Ah, the smell of the country".

We still crack up over it today.