The Trouble With Farms

Like cocaine, farms have a way of taking over your life. Slowly but surely, all your time, money, and even your family, gets sucked into the farm. It starts slowly, just like a drug addiction. Horses are marijuana, the gateway drug. They pave the way for property, barns, and fencing. But horses lead to more dangerous vices – like goats. Goats are cocaine. Goats take over. When you have a farm any time the phone rings – be afraid, be very afraid. Last night I was at work, standing over a dead guy, when the phone rang.

“One of your goats is out! Another one has her head caught in the fence!”

Hmmmm… I look down at the dead guy and try to decide which is the greater emergency. Since clearly the dead guy isn’t going anywhere, I try to coach my mother through goat extraction techniques. This is much like the flight tower trying to talk a hysterical passenger through ways to safely land an aircraft. It wasn’t pretty, - lots of grunting and heavy breathing, (Mom, not the goat.) but the goat soon bounded off to join her companions. Now it was time to address the other problem – the loose goat.

I tend to pace when I’m on the phone. Deep in Farmland, I paced around the room. From time to time, I rounded a piece of furniture to be startled by a dead guy on the floor. Why this surprised me was a bit bizarre since there was only one dead guy and he wasn’t exactly hiding behind the furniture playing peek-a-boo. Oh well, such is the nature of my life. Where were we? Oh yeah! The loose goat……

Back in the flight tower, I begin talking my mother through the steps of coaxing goats with a bucket of grain. First she had to remove the big dogs from the back yard. Check. She could do that. No problem. She returned to the goats. Big problem. All the goats were loose and were now in two separate pastures. Problem #2 – It is never wise to lure goats with oats when hungry horses are also in the pasture. I decide the problem is Way Too Big for my mother to handle. Tell her to keep an eye on goats while I call my Other Half.

Other Half has both stock dogs with him at the moment. He is less than enthusiastic about the idea of driving back to the house to deal with goats, but agrees that Mother is in way over her head. Call Mother to inform her that Other Half is on his way home. Continue to pace. Almost step on dead guy again. Crap!

Confident that Other Half is at the Helm, I can now address Dead Guy. (He doesn’t talk much.) Get back to work. Phone rings again. Other Half. He explains how he did not even need to use Border Collie – he shook a feed bucket. I thank Other Half profusely and get back to Dead Guy. It’s okay. We have plenty of time. Dead Guy is patient. Dead Guy doesn’t have goats.

:) s