Tag: farmer

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Almost Everyone Should Keep Chickens

Dads are an interesting bunch. They’re either absent; or they’re present in body but absent in any meaningful way (such as when you want a lift to a dodgy club no parent worthy of the title would ever take their 17-year-old, much less drop off a block away so the teenager in question wouldn’t have to be seen with their totally embarrassing dad); or they care deeply about the fortunate position they’re in and want to bestow upon their children gems of wisdom. Gems like, “You could feed the world on chickens and zucchini. If everyone just kept chickens and grew zucchini, world hunger would cease.”

Like I said, interesting.

In honour of Father’s Day – and now that I am 36 years old and living 4,000 miles away from my bonkers old man – I can concede that fathers sometimes do know best. At least when it comes to solving life’s little problems, like world hunger. So as a tribute to my dad, here are 7 reasons why almost everyone should keep chickens.

1. Chickens + zucchini = starvation solved! In a nutshell, the theory is this: chickens are inexpensive, easy to keep and don’t take up much space. They produce eggs, which you can eat, and if you can tolerate a noisy cockerel, they’ll also keep producing chickens, which you also can eat. Zucchini, otherwise known as courgette, operates in much the same way. Cheap, self-sufficient, produces loads. Mind you, no one actually likes to eat zucchini, but shred it in with some eggs (and other stuff) and you can make the world’s greatest cake. Fact.

2. Got weeds? Hate cutting the grass? Get chickens and they’ll do all the work for you. What’s more, they’ll actually enjoy doing it for you. Let’s not kid ourselves that chickens are anything like pets, because they’re not. They’re skittish instead of cuddly, they sometimes get mites (which are gross) and they’re incredibly stupid. So stupid, in fact, that their world revolves around scratching up worms and picking at weeds. Chickens are like vacuum cleaners for the garden, except that they…

3. …poo everywhere. This is one aspect that chicken enthusiasts will always gloss over. Yes it’s lovely to see a smattering of colourful hens blissfully pecking about in your garden, but the price you pay is in poo. On the upside, the stinky stuff is so rich in nutrients that it will keep your zucchini plants growing fat and happy without any weird chemical frankenfertilisers.

4. I’ve yet to meet a kid who willingly eats the crusts of bread, but do you know who will? That’s right. As well as being squawking, pooing, mite-infested simpletons, chickens have another thing going for them: they will eat anything your kids won’t, including eggs and eggshells. But not actual chicken-meat byproducts, which would just be gross and cruel, even if they’d be too dumb to know the difference.

5. Also, kiddies love chickens. Collecting eggs is like finding a little present every day. Feeding chickens gives children a sense of responsibility and compassion, or at least it keeps them out of your hair for five minutes. Better yet, let your kids have some fluffy chicks. Just don’t tell them they’ll probably get eaten someday (the chickens, not the kids.)

6. Everybody loves eggs. Therefore your popularity will be guaranteed every time you nonchalantly offer a free half-dozen to your mates. No one has to know it’s because the thought of one more omelette is enough to send you rushing for the laxatives.

7. Chickens in knitwear. This phenomenon is beyond my powers of sarcasm, you just have to appreciate it for yourselves.

June 3, 2013
7 Reasons To Be A Farmer

Yesterday Marc gave you 7 Reasons To Be A Father, so, in line with my attitude as to do as little work as possible, I have changed just two letters. Today it’s seven reasons to turn yourself into one of these:

A Farmer

1. Burglars. Late to bed, early to rise. As farmer’s sayings go, that isn’t a particularly popular one. But that does not make it any less true. Most plummet at 11pm and arise at 4am. That gives your average robber only a five hour period to commit their crimes. Most people have the correct amount of sleep and thus give burglars a further three hours to work in. So yes, ‘Stop Crime, Become A Farmer’. And of course, if you do find someone fiddling with your cucumbers, you have a pitching fork to stab them with. Assuming Big Dave pushes through this whole ‘fewer rights for burglars’ thing, you’ll be good to poke his eyes out too. The burglar’s, not Cameron’s.*

2. Machines. Not only will you get your hands on a Land Rover, you’ll also have a legitimate reason to have one. And an even more legitimate reason not to wash it. But that’s not all! Oh no. You’ll also have a combine harvester, a quad bike, a tractor and one very good excuse to spend all your time in the garage. Which means your farmer’s wife (or husband) has a very good reason to stay in the kitchen making you pork pies.

3. Scarecrow. No more fancy dress shops for you. Your ready-made costume is in that field. Never have your looked so good in you dad’s clothes.

4. Ooo Arghhh! Everyone likes putting on an accent, but there is a time and a place. The Brixton-bound 192, for example, is not the bus on which to pretend you are a native Jamaican. (That woman’s accusation that I was reenacting a scene from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum still upsets me to this day). Anyway, the point is that as soon as you become a farmer you get the accent. Whether it be a West-Country burr, an East-Anglian whirr or the hoity-toityness of an organic crop grower.

5. Dog. If you want a four legged friend but your partner doesn’t, become a farmer. All farmers have to have a dog. It’s like a rule or something. A farmer without a dog is like a football match without Ashley Young diving. Or Gordon Brown playing a game of marbles without being tempted to whip his glass eye out. It just doesn’t happen.

6. Wellington Boots. Apart from those couple of days in January and one weekend in June, when else do you where your boots? Exactly, hardly ever. Wellington boots have one of the highest ‘cost to use’ ratios of any product in the world. Ever. Unless you are a farmer. Because if you are a farmer you always wear boots. In the winter and the summer. In the cow shed and the bath. On the farm and the dog. Farmers have the best ‘cost-to-use’ wellington boot ratio of anyone in the world. Ever. Fact.

7. Hay. Some farmers loan out their fields. Some loan out their barns. Some loan out their wives. What I have a never seen a farmer do, however, is utilise the amount of spare hay they have. Which seems odd really. With so many horny people about, they could easily charge £10 for a roll in the hay.

*Sorry if this disappoints you.

NB: I came up with five of these. The best two came from someone else. And she’s not even a farmer. Weird.

June 29, 2011
7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Play FarmVille

If you use the social networking site Facebook, you’ll doubtless be familiar with FarmVille, the most successful Facebook game there is. Here are seven reasons that you shouldn’t play it.

1. Imagination. When you’re playing FarmVille, you’re pretending that you’re a farmer. Farming is not exciting. It’s essentially portly, ruddy-faced people and mud, or portly, ruddy-faced people and blood, depending on which type of farming it is. If you’re going to pretend to be something, pretend to be something interesting; a pirate, an astronaut, a mermaid, a flying horse, a rock star, an oculus, an aardvark, a many-headed warrior-beast, the Archbishop of Canterbury…anything, it’s all better than pretending you’re a farmer.

2. Spam. Your friends want to log onto Facebook without being inundated with updates on the progress of your pretend farm. Tell us about something that does exist instead. How are your children? How is your husband? How is your pet? Step away from the “farm” for a moment and check that they’re all still there and in good health, then tell us about it. Perform a head-count if you need to.

3. Reality. Instead of pretending to grow vegetables on your computer, why don’t you actually grow some vegetables? It’s not difficult. All you need are some seeds and some mud. Just weed and water them occasionally (this takes less time than tending your suppositious crops) and eventually you’ll be able to pull them up and eat them. You can’t eat your computer can you? No, no matter how much the rest of us wish you would.

4. It’s not sociable. My Facebook friends that play FarmVille assist each other on their imaginary farms that don’t exist. I know this from my news feed. Yet these people don’t come and help out in my garden, which is real. I grow real things there (badly). If you came to help me grow my real plants, I’d share them with you and ply you with beer. This is how people really interact and bond. When FarmVille tells the world, via Facebook, that “David helped Rachel harvest her plums”, you haven’t really interacted with each other – unless it’s a euphemism, in which case, well done David, I never knew you had it in you.

5. Swastika. Okay, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t find it funny, but it obviously took a lot of time and effort to grow your swastika. That’s time you could have spent being a real Nazi, goose-stepping about in a fetching uniform, annexing the Sudetenland and shouting things in German…or not, no, that’s a bad idea. You could surely have done something better with that time though: Read a book; go for a walk; climb a mountain – no – climb every mountain; ford every stream; follow every rainbow; till you find your dream. Or perhaps do something unrelated to The Sound of Music, your choice.

6. Grow up. This may come as a blow to some of the 7 Reasons team, but it’s not socially acceptable to have an imaginary friend after the age of nine. So why is it deemed acceptable to have an imaginary farm? A farm is bigger than a friend – unless your friend is American – so surely it’s a bigger no-no?

7. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! It’s come to this: I’m actually writing about real people growing imaginary plants and tending non-existent animals on their pretend farms which only exist in cyberspace, and you’re reading what I’ve written about actual people cultivating fabricated crops and make-believe livestock on fictitious farms which aren’t real. What has become of us? Death to FarmVille! Stupid bloody fucking FarmVille.

April 14, 2010