Farming: Part 2

I was motivated to raise a crop, thus performing the miracle of mechanized gardening called “farming”. Perhaps a tractor would fix the “no time” conundrum that kills my hopes of gardens.

Here’s my logic: In theory, a farmer sits on a tractor several hours in spring, several hours in fall, and a few hours in the middle. You do not need to feed a tractor in a February blizzard. Your tractor won’t wilt in a frost. Raccoons cannot eat your tractor. Tractors won’t dig under the fence and run away. See my point? Given my harried schedule, farming seemed more approachable than gardening.

Repeat after me: “God bless the internal combustion engine.”

That last sentence is all my personal bias. I love machines. That whole angle of driving around on dirt is a real selling point. If I didn’t have a tractor to churn up a field I’d probably wind up doing donuts on the lawn with my truck.

So I would be a “farmer”. My “crop” would be a single monoculture field of something that I could ignore during most of the summer and mechanically manage for planting and harvest en masse. It made as much sense as my other ideas.

More in the next post.

A.C.

Note: If you’re warming up for a rant about industrial farming and GMO corn and chemical fertilizers and how we’re all going to die by next Tuesday because Monsanto is just Skynet with overalls please cut me some slack. Of course a lovingly coddled organic carrot is a wonderful thing but I’m also a big fan of plentiful cheap food. Can’t we all get along? There’s room for us all. Organic lettuce and Fritos both have a place in my heart. (The latter may be clogging it.) Also I happen to be deeply opposed to starvation and Hempster McWholefoods isn’t going to feed us all with her four acre night soil augmented patch of organic arugula. I can live with 500 horsepower tracked diesel monsters chewing across Kansas if I get endless cheap boxes of cereal.

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0 Responses to Farming: Part 2

  1. oltanker says:

    “Organic” is a synonym for “overpriced and raised in pig-sh*t”

    MC

  2. Robert says:

    “Monsanto is just Skynet with overalls” Oh, so you’ve been talking to my ex?
    Too bad you can’t realistically run your tractor with solar or ethanol to keep the veggy/greenie crowd pacified.

  3. Joe in PNG says:

    Ever just want to say to these folks “do you have an actual background in biochemistry, with the assoicated study into the topic, or are you just parroting something you read on Facebook that Snopes debunked 10 years ago?”

    • Want to say it? I want to tatoo it on their head! This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to heirloom seeds growing in compost, only that it’s annoying watching latter day superstitionists hammering science they don’t comprehend.

      • cspschofield says:

        Healthy foods nitwits have been around for a looooong time. Kelloggs started out as “health food”. So did Graham Crackers. And each iteration of the idiocy is SURE they have the Revealed Word of Gia …. right up until the pains start to come.

        I’m all for letting them drink raw milk and eat organic no-pesticide bean sprouts. The quicker they die of the diseases modern food production mostly eradicated, the better.

  4. soapweed says:

    Sir: A little late reading your posts, but in regards to “racoons do not eat your tractor” let me forewarn you that a friend of mine up in the hills had TWO tractors’ wiring looms eaten up by packrats, a close second cousin of racoons. The digested remains were however left for him to try to reconnect to the battery in some haphazard form, as in round smallish nuggets……
    Now as to racoons, they may not eat a tractor, but what they cannot eat, they will deposit the takings from your garden and deposit them ON your tractor usually where it is most likely that you will sit. I am an unorthodox authority on such matters. I won’t even get started about the leavings of my coyote friends on tractor wheels[rims].
    Regards, Soapweed

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