Rural Insights

Not Just Another Pretty City Slicker
Robin Hoselton

It’s said that there’s book knowledge and there’s street smarts. There’s a third kind of information that a city slicker like me has gleaned by living on a farm. Here are twenty examples that come to mind:

1.  You can tell one rooster from another by the sound of its crow.

2.  A black cow will choose to have difficulty calving in the blackest of winter nights when you’d rather be watching a movie on TV instead of holding a flashlight.

3.  It’s easier to carry two buckets half full of water than one full bucket.

4.  The one time you run outside in your nightgown to let the chickens out, figuring it should be safe because there’s nobody around for miles, is the time that a feed salesman will pay an early morning visit.

5.  Sparrow’s eggs are white with brown specks.

6.  Those cute furry bunnies exist solely to devour your prettiest flowers and gnaw on newly planted trees.

7.  Three items never thrown away are pieces of wire, twine, and feed sacks. The day after you’ve discarded them, you’ll need the wire to repair a fence, the twine to make the garden rows, and the sacks to store walnuts.

8.  A whippoorwill’s call is not soft and romantic, but is irritatingly shrill.

9.  Never reach into an open grain bag without checking first for the presence of mice.

10.  There’s a law that says every farmhouse must have at least two or three gloves lying around with holes in the fingers or missing mates.

11.  A 30-gallon garbage can holds 150 pounds of chicken feed.

12.  When your husband asks you to come help him for a few minutes, you may as well figure that your whole day is shot.

13.  Cows slurp and gulp water; horses are silent drinkers.

14.  The hard, stiff inflexible bottle nipples that you buy to hand-raise a young animal finally become soft and pliable when no longer needed.

15.  The most elegant and expensive evening gown in the world can’t compare in value to a good pair of mud boots.

16.  Wealth is not measured by dollars in the bank. You are rich if you have a winter’s supply of wood, a barn full of hay, and a cellar or freezer full of garden produce.

17.  A good neighbor is worth his weight in gold, when gold is up.

18.  Gooseberry blossoms are a dubious pleasure. On one hand, they promise delicious pies from their berries; on the other, their appearance signals the advent of ticks and snakes.

19.  Sleeping late means until 7:15 a.m.

20.  Farmers are crazy.

Tagged book knowledge, city slicker, humor column, humorous notes of country lifes, living in the country, robin hoselton, rural insights, street smarts