Tag: farming

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
7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

1. Flavour. We’re all familiar with the expression, you are what you eat. This is true; diet informs flavour. The diet of chickens is dull. Chickens are fed corn and grains and the sort of dreary stuff that we use to bulk-up stews and casseroles. Flamingos eat shrimp, which are wonderfully flavoursome, and a substantial portion of their flavour comes from these. Chickens taste dull; flamingos taste of fish, which is much, much better. Also, as you are what you eat, which would you rather be, a chicken or a flamingo?

2. Health. Most flamingos are wild and are, therefore, game. They are free to roam and free to eat natural food. Most chickens are not. Eating flamingos would, consequently, be healthier than eating chickens. It would also provide American hunters with exercise as they stalked their dinner by the lake rather than driving their pick-up trucks to the supermarket. They would also have to camouflage themselves in pink, which would give the rest of us a laugh.

“Billy-Bob, you’s a sissy.”

3. Leg. Everyone wants the chicken leg because it’s firm: this is because the leg is one of the few limbs that the sedentary farmed chicken exercises regularly – as a result of this, it is toned. Flamingos spend most of their lives standing on one leg – they alternate regularly between them. This means that flamingo legs are firmer and nicer than chicken legs. They’re also bigger. This will mean that sharing the leg becomes a possibility, saving mealtime arguments. Or it will mean that you get a bigger leg, it depends how mean-spirited you are.

4. Milk. You can’t milk a chicken. You can, however, milk a flamingo. We all know that the aisles of Waitrose are choc-full of people shopping for organic, Bermuda grass-fed, hand-reared, free-range Angora goat’s milk. Imagine how much they’ll want the new fad – flamingo milk. Waitrose shoppers will be buying so much flamingo milk that they’ll probably have to fold the seats down in their Audi estates to transport it home. They may even have to buy a second Smeg fridge to put it all in.

5. Farming. Eventually, of course, the new niche popularity of the flamingo will lead to a mass-market demand for it. This will cause flamingos to become the exotic farmers livestock of choice. These people are usually found experimenting with farming ostriches, which will be replaced by the new glamorous avian farming fashion – the flamingo. This is great, as I’m – justifiably – terrified of ostriches, with their cruel, murdererous eyes, their sharp, oversized talons and their menacing, powerful beaks. I have no fear of flamingos. They are pink.

6. Colour. There are few sites in the British countryside more breath-taking than vast swathes of bright yellow rapeseed in full bloom. With the new flamingo farms, it will be possible to stumble across fields full of pink clusters of gangly birds – all year round. This will brighten up the landscape no end, especially at sunset. Countryside campsites will become countryside camp sites where you’ll be able to enjoy the countryside camp sight of intense pink colours in tents (pink coloured).

7. Feathers. The best feathers for stuffing pillows are goose and duck feathers. Chicken feathers aren’t very good so they’re usually ground down and used in textiles and plastics. Flamingos – like geese and ducks – are water-birds so, presumably, their feathers also make good stuffing for pillows. Their colourful down would enliven pillow-fights no end. The abundance of pink feathers would make feather boas cheaper and more commonplace which may lead to a boom in the burlesque industry. Sadly, it would also lead to an increase in gaudy hen nights. You don’t have too much to fear from the greater incidence of gaggles of lascivious, portly, bingo-wing-sporting harridans drunkenly cruising your local high street draped in pink feather boas though, because with your new healthier diet of flamingo, you’ll be fitter and able to run away that much faster.

February 8, 2010