Dear County Agent Guy

by Jerry Nelson

  Dear

  County

  Agent

  Guy

  Calf Pulling, Husband Training, and Other Dispatches from the Heart of the Midwest

  Jerry Nelson

  Workman Publishing • New York

  To my wife, Julie,

  the mother of our two sons and my biggest fan

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part 1

  Living the Country Life,

  or Why “Let’s Get Plowed!” Doesn’t Mean the Same Thing to City Folks as It Does to Farmers

  A Norwegian Bachelor Dairy Farmer Finds a Wife!

  The Throwback

  Silo Time

  That Old House

  The Modern Marvel

  Adventures in Cow Herding

  Domestic Lessons

  My New Address

  Old Frank

  The Lady Vet

  Don Quixote, Tax Reformer

  Farm Supply Stories

  Lutefisk Season

  Dear County Agent Guy

  Part 2

  How to Raise Farm-Fresh Kids in Twenty-Five Years or Less!

  Labor and Delivery

  Electric Fencing 101

  Christmas Shopping with a Caveman

  Never Sleep with a Baby Chick

  Surviving Parenthood

  The Ghosts of Horses Past

  Deep Diaper Doo-Doo

  Uncle Wilmer

  Husband Training Made Easy

  Monkey Business

  I’m Gonna Marry Mrs. Mortimer!

  Staying Married to a Dairy Farmer

  Hawaii Boy

  Part 3

  Never Kick a Fresh Cow Pie:

  Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Dairy Farming

  A Dairy Farmer’s Vacation

  My Shameful Affair with the Farm Program

  Out in the Trees

  Of Silos and Learjets

  What’s in a Cow’s Name?

  A Dog Named Sam

  Farm Corporate Jargon

  A Lesson in Organic Chemistry

  You Stinker!

  Experiments in Fermentation

  Winter Storm Stories

  Visiting

  The Four Seasons of Farming

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Introduction

  I am the great-grandson of sturdy Norwegian pioneers who homesteaded on the open prairies of eastern South Dakota. Growing up on our 160-acre dairy, my sole ambition in life was to become a farmer like my dad and his father and his father before him. No one knows how far back my family’s farming roots might reach, but it’s entirely possible that my ancestors used mastodons to pull their plows.

  Shortly after graduating from high school, I was able to rent a small dairy farm and begin my own dairy operation. For the next few years, I led the carefree life of a Norwegian bachelor farmer. Having grown up among five sisters, I had underestimated the pleasures of living without feminine rule-makers. Bathing became an option that was exercised perhaps once a month. A guy could scratch whatever he wanted whenever he wanted without fear of being called “gross” or being told, “What is wrong with you? Take that outside!”

  But life without female companionship has its downsides, one of which is deep loneliness. I met my future wife and somehow managed to convince her to marry me. By the time we were thirty, we had two young sons, had purchased my great-grandparents’ farm, and had built a new dairy facility in partnership with my parents. We were half a million dollars in debt and thoroughly convinced that we were living the American farming dream.

  “Busy” does not begin to describe a dairy farmer’s work schedule. City folks talk about putting in a nine to five; a dairyman’s day commonly stretches from five to nine and beyond. Between chores and the kids and the cows and field work, there’s barely time for bathroom breaks. This is why many farmers still drive tractors that have open platforms. A busy farmer also has a lot of hard-won knowledge regarding windage.

  One blazing July morning, after we had been married for seven years, I descended into an underground manure pit to unplug a stubborn manure pump. I started feeling woozy and had begun to climb out of the pit when everything faded to black. Hydrogen sulfide, one of the most toxic substances known to man, had claimed another victim.

  Or so it seemed. My father discovered me floating faceup in the manure a short time later. Emergency crews were summoned; hero stuff took place. After six weeks in the hospital—including most of a month in intensive care—I was able to walk out of the medical facility unassisted. Nurses cried, doctors were astounded. The only lingering effect, aside from the chest tube and tracheotomy scars, is some minor damage to the vision center of my brain. My peripheral vision isn’t what it used to be, but the way I see it, that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to walk around atop the earth instead of reclining beneath it.

  In the aftermath of my farm accident, many said, “God must have a plan for you!” Well, fine. But what, exactly, might that be? What would warrant such a cosmic tap on the shoulder?

  The only thing that I know for certain is that the experience left me with a heightened appreciation for life. Every day on the topside of the dirt has been a bonus, a freebie. It’s as if I totally blew off every single class yet still managed to graduate with an A.

  Soon after returning home from the hospital, I went back to work on our dairy farm. Life went on; our sons continued to grow; the little blue ball kept on spinning. And through it all—a barn fire, being attacked by a bull, bankruptcy, my father’s sudden passing—I tried to maintain a sense of perspective. I am not even supposed to be at the table; who am I to complain about the snooty waiter and the lousy service?

  The summer of 1996 was wetter than a duck’s butt. My fields were so soaked for so long that cattails had begun to grow where there should have been rows of corn. One of the main problems with wet weather is that there’s nothing a guy can do about it. Except complain. Because there is so much that’s beyond a farmer’s control, many have become expert complainers.

  Frustrated by the weather situation, I penned a letter to Mel Kloster, a friend and a Brookings County Extension Agent. A county extension agent is a purveyor of information, a conduit of knowledge between farmers and the state’s land-grant universities. I asked Mel if he knew of a cheap, effective herbicide that would eliminate the cattails growing in my cornfield. And while he was at it, maybe he could tell me how to get rid of all those pesky waterfowl and Jet Skis that were out in my corn. Certainly they were tearing up some of the corn’s leaves! (I was just guessing about the leaf damage part, what with everything being underwater.)

  Mel said that he had enjoyed my epistle and encouraged me to publish it somewhere. My first reaction was “Why the heck would I want to do that?” My second one was “Why the heck not? I should be pushing daisies at this very moment; who cares what anyone thinks?” So it was pretty much on a lark that my column “Dear County Agent Guy” was born and I began my voyage across the terra incognita of journalism.

  My formal training as a writer began and ended with a high school class called Creative Writing. One day our teacher, Mr. Brown, announced that we had thirty minutes to craft an original essay. I dashed off a fantastical tale about a nerdy farm boy meeting and dancing with a stunning young woman. After reading it, Mr. Brown loudly praised my story, causing me vast amounts of embarrassment. I was also secretly gratified. Despite what Mr. Brown had said about my writing abilities, I never dreamed that committing my words to paper would b
e of any value. After all, few of the farmers I grew up with would have viewed writing as real work. I have since come to see that writing can be just as much work as plowing a field and that a harvest of well-tended paragraphs can be every bit as gratifying as filling your bin with grain.

  I have been blessed with numerous opportunities to offer up my thoughts for the world’s scrutiny. And while my wife and I no longer dairy farm, we continue to harbor fond memories of the dairy farming business. Well, some of them are fond. Let’s just put it this way: Nothing good ever comes with a wet tail to the face.

  Part 1

  Living the Country Life,

  or Why “Let’s Get Plowed!” Doesn’t Mean the Same Thing to City Folks as It Does to Farmers

  A Norwegian Bachelor Dairy Farmer Finds a Wife!

  I have, over the years, received numerous cards and comments directed to my wife. These cards and comments all have one particular message in common: “You poor dear! How on earth do you manage to put up with that mean old husband of yours? He picks on you in his column all the time!”

  One little old lady reader, upon meeting my wife and me at a farm show, blurted out to my missus, “You poor thing! I ought to send you a sympathy card!”

  Hold on just a minute here! I admit that I pick on my wife some, but it’s all in good fun. Plus, she’s of resilient Teutonic stock and can handle just about anything.

  But why do I do it if it causes so much trouble, you might ask. The answer to that is complicated, but boils down to the fact that she deserves it. Sorta. Kinda. From a certain point of view. Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

  My wife and I had been going steady for a short while when I decided to drop in on her unannounced one evening. After I finished milking and cleaned myself up a bit, I drove into town and found the little trailer house she was living in at the time. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a strange car parked outside.

  I instantly assumed the worst, that she was in there with some other man and was on an intimate basis with him. This was due mostly to the size of her trailer house, which was so small that you couldn’t help but be intimate whenever there was more than one person inside.

  I asked myself a momentous question. “Self,” I said, “should I simply turn around and go home and never see her again? Or, should I go in and fight whoever is in there—it could very well be Jackie Chan, after all—for my girl?”

  I sucked it up and did the manly thing: I got out of my pickup, walked up to her door, and knocked. I will admit that I left the pickup running, though. If you’ve ever seen any of his movies, you would know that Jackie can be pretty feisty when it comes to fighting.

  My girlfriend answered the door and seemed quite happy to see me (in retrospect, I should have suspected something). After greeting me, she said those three words that can wither the manhood of even the manliest man. “Meet my dad,” she said.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. As she introduced us, she informed me that her father was an IRS agent. So it was that I spent an uncomfortable evening squirming and chatting and trying to be friendly and feeling profoundly guilty about a couple of different areas of my life.

  Another example happened about a year later, on our wedding night. We had done the whole church-wedding thing and the whole wedding-dance-afterward thing. It was two o’clock in the morning when we got back to our little farm; the plan was to toss on a change of clothes, grab our suitcases, and take off on our honeymoon trip.

  As we drove down the driveway, we saw numerous blue-green dots of light moving about in the dark distance. “What’s that?” asked my brand-new bride. “Are those fence post reflectors?”

  I felt a twinge deep in my gut. “If only!” I replied. “But fence posts don’t move around like that.”

  It was cows. My cows. They must have gotten together and decided it would be a hoot to bust through the fence and thus oblige me to chase them around in the dark on our wedding night.

  I parked the car and strategized. “Okay, here’s the plan,” I said. “You go down by the barn and hold the gate open. I’ll chase the cows toward you, and if any try to get past, you just flap your wedding dress and yell. Watch your step, though; there’s gonna be fresh cow flop lying about.”

  My wife looked down at her white gown, then fixed me with a steely stare. “If you think I’m going to chase cows in the dark in my wedding dress, you’re more Norwegian than I thought!” She then got out of the car and stomped into the house.

  Six hours. We had been married a whole six hours and already she was flouting the “obey” part of our wedding vows.

  And that’s why I pick on her from time to time: because she’s been one up on me for the past thirty-some years. I figure I might begin to pull even in, oh, another thirty years or so.

  A recent random conversation with a dairy farmer gobsmacked me with some ancient history.

  This particular dairy farmer has a particular surname, one that prompted a primeval memory to slowly rise from the murky depths of my gray matter, causing me to casually ask if he knew of a woman named Rosie who shares his surname.

  “Of course I do,” he replied. “She’s my sister.”

  I was stunned; you could have knocked me over with the flick of a cow’s tail. “Your sister,” I managed to mumble, “is responsible for me being married.”

  Back when I was a young and struggling dairy farmer, I was actually struggling on two fronts: First and foremost was making a go of it as a dairy farmer. Following at a very close second was finding female companionship.

  One fall evening I was walking down the street of a nearby town when I happened to bump into Rosie. She and I had a bit of a history, having hung out some at the local roller rink. We had also gone out on exactly one date. Every time I asked her out on a second date, she said she couldn’t go due to an urgent hair-washing emergency. Just my luck.

  “Rosie!” I exclaimed that night when I met her on the street. “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age! What say we duck into this fine establishment and I’ll buy you a beverage?” Rosie allowed that this sounded like a swell idea.

  We sat at an empty table and I ordered refreshments. Rosie then got up, saying that she needed to visit the ladies’ room. I told her that I would keep her chair warm.

  I have not seen her since. It’s been well over thirty years now and I’m beginning to think that she isn’t coming back. Actually, I came to that conclusion within about half an hour. I later noticed that the ladies’ room was located near the bar’s rear exit.

  My buddy Steve happened to be in the joint that evening, so he and I commiserated about the ineffable enigma that is the female species. As we talked, we began to construct a pyramid of empty beer cans, most of which were requisitioned from nearby tables.

  A waitress stopped at our table and I thought, “Welp, there goes our pyramid.” But instead she left us several more empties, enabling us to build a veritable Tower of Babel of beer cans.

  I thought this was pretty nice of her, which prompted me to stop and chat with her on my way out. That encounter went a bit better than the one with Rosie, as the nice waitress and I have now been married for more than three decades and have two grown sons.

  I never did figure out why Rosie gave me the slip that night. Perhaps she decided, at that exact moment and for no good reason, that she really didn’t like men all that much. It pained me to think that I may have been the last male contact for such a nice young lady, who, at that very moment, had decided to lead a life of celibacy.

  The chance encounter with Rosie’s brother caused me to wonder what might have been. After all, her ditching me in that bar wouldn’t have been a deal breaker, as far as I was concerned. Beggars and choosers and all that.

  I observed that Rosie’s brother’s teenaged kids are tall and good-looking and muscular, with straight white teeth. But so are the two sons who were born to my
wife and me. I then made an inquiry that brought forth a crucial fact: Rosie’s family is of Irish extraction!

  The mind reels with the possible complications that might have arisen from a union between a woman who is Irish and a guy who is Norwegian. For instance, can you imagine the nuclear odors that would radiate from a household where both lutefisk AND corned beef and cabbage are consumed? And what’s to keep a certain person from desecrating a perfectly good hunk of lefse—the Norwegian version of a tortilla—by dredging it through her mulligan stew?

  Ruminating upon these things, I deemed myself extremely lucky. How fortunate that Rosie ditched me that night, causing me to meet and marry my wife! How providential that I thus found someone who so sweetly tolerates my many foibles—even my “secret” pickled herring habit!

  As I parted company with her brother, I casually asked, “So, what’s Rosie up to nowadays? I imagine she’s living in a convent or something.”

  He looked at me as if I had just taken a swig of kerosene. “Rosie is married and has four kids,” he said. “Whatever makes you think that she’s living in a convent?” •

  The Throwback

  The tale goes something like this: A pair of Norwegian homesteader brothers built themselves a nice granary, two stories tall, with a sturdy stairway. Come oat harvest they bagged their grain at the threshing machine, hauled it to the granary, then carried the bags upstairs so they could dump the oats into the bin below.

  Being Norwegian, it never occurred to them to simply walk into the bin and dump the grain on the floor.

  Some will slap their foreheads and say, “Uffda! That’s the sort of story that gives us Norskies a bad name!” I, on the other hand, think that they were merely throwbacks. And I should know throwbacks, because I am one.

  For instance, some perfectly good bromegrass grows in the ditches that run alongside our township gravel road. This grass will be useful next winter when our half dozen Jersey steers want something to munch on other than the icicles hanging from the barn roof.