July: The kitchen in my grandmother’s house smelled like collard’s boiling, creamed corn, fecund humidity and fresh ink on the latest issue of The Progressive Farmer; John Deere green on one page, Massey Ferguson red on another. A picture of Ford’s new Maverick sat glumly next to a farmhouse looking relieved it was not the pinched-rear Pinto. The magazine was the diametric opposite of Rolling Stone but there was always a copy handy. There still is.
Each month, my copy of The Progressive Farmer arrives and, like so many other periodicals, I read it cover to cover – as if I am still on the farm. In many ways I am.
Because of The Progressive Farmer, I know how corn acreage is affected by ethanol production. I can talk semi-intelligently about animal ag’s next big challenge. I am familiar with drought-proof programs and balers and the two-week, four-island Hawaiian Farm Tour (for $1,679). From conservation easements to quarantining animals to the price of crop acreage in South Dakota (average $1,500 per), I am a gimme-capped encyclopedia of arcane, agricultural knowledge that I will likely never use. If they ever have Farmer’s Week on Jeopardy, however, I’m signing up.
I read a lot of things online, but that’s tough to do in the restroom, and like Backpacking and Motor Trend, The Progressive Farmer is a one-handed learning tool when you are otherwise occupied. Often I sit and ponder how to cure a dog of red mange or lust for a Sand Creek Post and Beam Barn in which to stash the big, honking Case tractor I do not own. If you have ever seen the Dr® Field and Brush Mower, you understand equipment envy. Some men think about sex all the time. A more attainable dream would involve chewing up sections of broadleaf, Johnsongrass, bull nettles and cuckle burrs.
My grandmother read The Progressive Farmer every month. Strangely, she also subscribed to Golf Digest, even though I am fairly certain she had never seen an actual golf ball or a set of clubs or even a golf course in her life. The South is funny like that. Just when you think you have someone figured out, they shank one through the trees and onto the green for a hole in one.
I read about stump-jumpers, SoySoap and the dangers of herbicides for groundwater. The Progressive Farmer advises about all of that and more. Besides, you never know when you may have to deal with an angry Cornich Rock Broiler or fight a Gelbvieh Bull during a cold Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
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Tags: Humor, Magazines, The South