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Advanced Member
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What are some of your stories from the farm, you know the ones that always make you laugh or smile? The ones that are often told at Thanksgiving Dinner every year because they always generate a laugh or smile no matter how many times you tell them?
******
My story starts with a rock that used to be where my house is located now. The key words being USED TO. Now my Grandfather liked two things...dynamite and hard apple cider, and typically he liked to combine the two extremes when he could. After farming around this rather big rock for years and years, he decided us boys should learn "the proper way to blow stumps and rocks from the ground," after all it was a dying farm skill.
Now we all know when working with high explosives its best to be in the proper frame of mind, but I am here to say that after getting pretty hard into the hard apple cider he always had brewed up, the day we blew up the rock was NOT one of those days for my grandfather.
He decided that simple dynamite was not going to cut it being a big rock and all, so we added some ammonium nitrate to our growing list of supplies, copper sulfate, diesel fuel and some blasting caps. In hind sight, any of the two explosives probably would have been enough, but this was no ordinary rock, and as I said, we had farmed around it for years that day was our revenge!
Using the tractor to dig some holes around the rock, we added 7 sticks of dynamite, and then the concoction of fuel oil, ammonium nitrate and copper sulfate and inserted the blasting cap. No need to cover the rock with sand or a blasting mat or anything..."never did before" he said and then proceeded to run some speaker wire to a car battery. Now was the time we decided...time to blow the rock to smithereens.
Grandfather touched the wire ends to the battery cable and all of hades let loose from the earth. Instead of a big puff, there was an explosion as the dirt kicked out from each side and the rock began to go skyward. Unbeknown to us, the rock was not so big....well it was in size, but it was not very thick, being more of a slab of rock then a big boulder. So when the rather excessive charge went off, the flat rock caught the explosion underneath it rather flatly and instead of shattering, it hefted the entire thing right out of the ground in a nice circular arch.
Now if the power lines had not been there, it would have been just another rock-blasted-from-the-ground story, but the rock...having the aerodynamics of a flat slab of granite, decided that flying was not its forte and made an agreement with gravity to fall back to the earth. Now why it chose to do that as it hovered above the power lines we will never know, but after slicing through the power lines and the phone lines with amazing speed and accuracy, it landed on the shoulder of the road with a loud "womp". At the same time the explosion set up this shock wave that bent every tree over in a one mile area. It knocked our hats off as it rolled by us, and toppled several weak trees out in the forest.
With no power in the house, an explosion and a powerful shock wave buffeting the house, my Grandmother came out of the house...who incidentally had not been in the hooch and in no way, shape or form should have been considered jovial, and to top it all off was built like Napoleon; short, stocky and swearing like a sailor; she let loose with a tongue lashing that curled my Grandfather's hair...or would have been if he was not so darn happy from the aforementioned white lightning!
In the end we took the tractor and pushed the rock out of the ditch and onto the rock wall where it is too this day. Grandmother eventually grew hoarse from her never ending, not-so-jovial name calling, and the power company said they had never repaired power lines from a dynamited rock before, but were happy to do so provided we pay for all the expenses. And us boys...yes we learned the proper way to blow rocks from the ground for sure....now we only use SIX sticks of dynamite!
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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New Member
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was told a good one last night.
A newcomer had sent his son to my cousins farm to learn were food came from and about work..same old story.
Now it's not what is said but what we mean. So when the boy was told,
"Ok, Jr. go out and run in the cows" he was only gone for a few moments, when a door built for 2 had 4 jamming to get in.
Ok....ok.. walk them in next time.
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Average Member
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The one that always gets talked about the most around here is the day a bantie rooster my sister had decided to attack mom while she was hanging out laundry and she grabbed the first thing that she could lay her hands on and hit the rooster hard in side of the head - he dropped to the ground and she was trying to hide the body until dad got home from work so he could bury the rooster before sis found out mom had killed him. Well about 2 hours later that rooster stood up & crowed! She hadn't killed him she just knocked him out for a few hours when she hit him with the 2X4. That rooster actually had some brains he never tried to attack anyone again LOL
Lord keep you arm around my shoulder & your hand over my mouth If God brings you to it, He will see you through it 'The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.'
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When I was about 11, we rented a stone farmhouse, and the neighbouring farmer rented the land. One day, my dad and the farmer were chatting and my dad said "I see you've got a new bull." "Bull? What bull?" asked the farmer. "That one over there, isn't that a bull?" "Yep, that's a bull. So, how long have I been feeding him?" The bull disappeared the next day, along with about six of his heifers.  A couple of years later, we bought another old stone farmhouse with about 3 acres of land. The neighbouring farm was owned by a the kind of farmer who, if he won a million dollars, would just keep on farming until it was all gone. The last farm in the county to go to a bulk tank, and probably the last farm to get indoor plumbing. We first met him as he was trucking some heifers up the lane next to our property, to get into his back field. Every time he hit a bump, a cow fell out of the truck - and he didn't notice!  My mom was digging up a patch of ground to plant a vegetable garden while the same farmer stood and watched for a while. She kept digging up bits of pottery, old tin cans, various trash. Finally, he says to her "that wuz the ol' Willougby garbage dump". She said "You might have said something!" and he replied "Waaal, Ah reckoned you'd figger it out eventually."
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oh heck that could have been anyone's stupid mistake.. but who would drop off a tractor with out telling you what is what?
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My great-grandfather was haying this field we call the Cates Place. Its a pretty big field, but it has this sag in the middle of it that is always wet. Even today we get stuck in it, and my great-grandfather was no different. As he was mowing the field, his tractor sank in the mud.
Well the John Deere dealer up in Newport was always after him to buy a John Deere, but my Great-Grandfather was a Farmall man through and trough. Anyway on this one day the John Deere guy showed up in the field and saw the Farmall stuck.
"Hey Fred, you're wouldn't have got stuck if you had a John Deere pulling that mower," he said.
Mad enough at the situation, my Great-Grandfather told the John Deere Dealer, "well if your John Deere can pull me out of the mud and finish the rest of the field without getting stuck I'll buy the darn thing."
Well the dealer had a John Deere hauled over and sure enough the John Deere hauled the tractor out of the mud and finished mowing the field. Well back in those days a man did what he said he would do and so my Great-Grandfather bought the tractor on the spot...that did not mean he liked it though! Oh no, he was a Farmall man through and through.
So all summer he loathed the John Deere more and more, but in the fall he got his revenge. The John Deere dealer asked him to say a few words at the Maine Potato Boards annual banquette about how much he liked his new John Deere. Well back in those days the potato board weilded some pretty good power. My Great-Grandfather tried to get out of it, saying he was too busy, and that he couldn't get a ride and whatnot, but the dealer was not about to let him off so easy. So they drove down and picked him up and drove him to Bangor, a ride over an hour away.
At the banquette they said, "Now this is Fred, the biggest potato farmer in Waldo County and he wants to say a few words about his new John Deere."
So my Great-Grandfather gets up there and says, "Boy's, I think you are a little confused. You see I got me 5 tractors and one John Deere!"
He said later on that it was a VERY quiet ride home that night!
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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Years ago when we not only hayed for ourselves, but also custom hayed...we would often be out haying at midnight or later. Well back then it was nothing to work an 18-20 hour day which could make a guy kind of groggy. Now the key word there is GUY because...well ladies just don't have the same issues men have sometimes which is the crux of this story.
Well this one night after pitching hay all afternoon and evening, my arms felt like jello and my mind was running on about 3 hours sleep. It was about 90 degrees outside and in the hay mound it was one degree under the melt point of cast iron. Needless to say I was hot and had been drinking my fair share of soda and water. Well even sweating like a woman of ill repute inside of church, there is only so much liquid you can get rid of...which is a long way of saying I had to go to the bathroom.
So down over the hay bales I went, rounded the corner of the barn and well went to the bathroom as no lady can do. But it was hardly a time to be proud that I could go standing up because unbeknownst to me, and in my rather groggy head and limited light, I did not know there was AN ELECTRIC FENCE there!!!
I did when my stream hit the wire now I'll tell you.
I saw stars.
I saw Elvis
I saw God himself...well maybe not god or the tunnel but most certainly the white light. Oh yes I saw the white light...about ever second if memory serves me right...in time with the shock of the fence charger incidentally!
One has never experienced the full effect of 11,000 volts unless one tinkles on it. My goodness I thought I had died and at the time, I sure wished I had. Words cannot describe the pain, anguish and suffering a man in that predictiment goes through, it is as if God himself hates you for allowing something like that to occur!
But I did live, and while I never thought I would ever be able to have children in 9 lifetimes, I have managed to sire one. I don't know how though. So yes laugh if you want, and even laugh at this...20 years later, when I am tired...I take all possibility of repeating that move again and squat...even if its just to go #1! (LOL)
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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Back when I was a kid my Dad worked the 3 to 11 shift at a chicken feed mill. He used to watch us kids play with our pet pig Lassie before getting on the bus. One day as my brother slid down our old metal slide on our swing set, Lassie decided to follow him down. Well the metal slide took my 50 pound brother just fine, but the 250 pound pig...it did not take so well. In fact it folded up faster then GMC without a government bailout!
So naturally when my father saw this he knew it was time Lassie went to bacon heaven that was conveniently located in our freezer. Dad was not skittish and did him in, then proceeded to do the slaughtering. Now none of this bothered my dad but he was not all that fast so when it was time to go to work in the afternoon, the pig was not quite done. So he tossed it in the freezer figuring he would get to it the next day. He never thought it would freeze that fast.
So the next day he was amazed when the remainder of the pig was frozen solid through and through. Now he had a problem, he could not thaw the meat out, cut it and then refreeze it, nor could he cut it as was. So in a moment of brilliance...or lack thereof, he put cooking oil in his chainsaw, fired it up and finished slaughtering the pig. It worked well, but he failed to take into account the 3/8 cut he was taking...and where all that frozen pig flesh was going. In fact it sprayed my parents finished basement from floor, walls and ceiling. In a frozen state it was not too bad, but after he went to work, and the pig flesh thawed out and made the finished garage smell like cut up, dead rotted pig...well my mom was not so happy.
In fact Lassie was the last pig we ever had. Of course us kids just thought that was because Lassie ran off to join the Maine Forest Service...(LOL)
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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| DB you aren't by any chance related to Marley are you? LMBBO At least the year dad & mom's cousin tried to cut up the frozen deer carcass in my livngroom they used a hack saw instead of a chain saw LOL The last pigs we had Bacon & Ham - Ham was in love with our son and everytime she would see him she would get so excited she'd try to get out of the pen to get to him and the day she finally did he thought he was going to die - she ran him over she was so excited then when she had him down on the ground she was just kissing his face all over. Picture a 90 lb 15 yo being kissed & loved by a 175 lb sow. LOL
Lord keep you arm around my shoulder & your hand over my mouth If God brings you to it, He will see you through it 'The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.'
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By marley I assume you mean Bob Marley? Why no I am not but I can relate to all the stuff he says about his family...he is most definitely a Mainer though he has lost his accent for sure now. I actually preferred Tim Sample as he had a very clean, very funny routine that hit all segments of the population, from the young to the old.
As for your romantic sow...yes I can picture that very much. In fact I got pictures myself of something similar...my wedding! (LOL)
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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