Saturday, October 22, 2011

Snapshots on the Farm

My ongoing series of smart phone enabled posts.
Nobody knows how to make the most of a beautiful fall day like farm kids. Here Justin and Morgan enjoy the swings after Justin got back from a trip to the grain elevator with GrandDad.


Sunday, October 16, 2011

Biting the Hand that Feeds You

Earlier today, Husband fielded a call from a telemarketer wanting to survey us on our grocery shopping habits. Fortunately, I didn't answer, considering my strong feelings about my food shopping experience.

Husband flummoxed the telemarketer with his response, which I found interesting too. He said, we live on a farm with livestock and have a garden, so we live off the land and don't need grocery stores. HA! That's not really true but it could be for us much more so than it could be for most people.

Today is Blog Action Day and since this year's theme is FOOD, I thought I would chime in with some thoughts about farm to fork.

There are blogs out there that will be happy to kill you with statistics about GMO and factory farms. Information fed to earnest young people by organizations who only vaguely hide their vegan agendas.

I don't have a lot of numbers. I only have a husband who has hand-delivered more babies than the average OB, children who turned their playroom in to a virtual rural village with feed elevator, breeding stock auction and jobs that help pay for farm supplies, and the dust that seeps into every pore of our old house during harvest.

I saw an interview once with a man on the street who told the reporter he didn't care what happened to farmers, since he could get all the food he needed at the grocery. This man had obviously never dragged himself out of bed on a frosty morning to milk cows or stayed up all night to ensure an anxious sow kept her babies fed.

Bandwagons are a lot easier to jump on than hay wagons, apparently. Before you bite the hands that feed you by subscribing to the notion that farmers are uncaring or not green or not even real people with wives who blog, remember that your grocer can't drive a tractor. Thank a farmer.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Casting Stones

This week two separate Facebook snafus RUINED the lives of many residents of greater Dayton. Actually, the two separate Facebook snafus were no big deal; they just seemed to be magnets for those annoying people who are both incapable of perspective and have too much time on their hands.

On Tuesday, the WHIO-TV Facebook page temporarily posted, a bomb will go off at 9:30. This left people in the area panicked for several whole seconds that a.) someone had hacked the WHIO-TV Facebook account or b.)  We had like ten hours to figure out where there was going to be a bomb.


In the moments before WHIO deleted the post and offered an apology, the post earned 54 comments consisting largely of WTF and, oddly, two likes. But even after repeated apologies and explanations that they accidentally hit return while writing a post about a bomb scare at a local school, WHIO continued to get posts on their wall by people complaining about the misstep. WHIO Facebook followers were incensed that they, for a few seconds, thought they might have ten hours to worry about a bomb--the fact that there was an actual bomb threat to a school with actual children seemed to be lost on them.

However, this bust of a bomb post pales in comparison to the debacle caused by Germantown resident and rogue Reese Witherspoon quoter, Emily Berry, who nearly wrecked the serenity of this quaint village with her Facebook abomination.


Emily tore the town in two by accidentally posting on the Remembering Germantown When... Facebook group thingy NOT a memory but a cute photo of her son IN. A. BAR.  And like a scene out of Footloose or perhaps the internet version of Harper Valley PTA, the locals attacked.

How could she have waited an entire 12 minutes to apologize and note she couldn't delete the post from her phone. How could she!

Her son, her Sweet Home Alabama quote and her Uncle Paul helped drive a record 79 comments over a three-day argue, bitch, misinterpretation and glad-I-left-Germantown palooza of laughable garbage with no end in sight.

Let he who is without Facebook sin...
Now, let's sit back and take a lesson from this.  If you accidentally mistype a post and it takes you seconds to fix it OR you post accidentally on the wrong spot and mobile technology doesn't allow you to fix it right away--then you are the scourge of humanity. (?)

The problem with this line of unforgiving heckling is this: we are all one or two clicks away from being the next Facebook debacle. It could happen to anyone.

We share our lives online. We have made Facebook our glass house. Let he who is without Facebook error, cast the first stone.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Fairly Ancient History

Nearly 30 days ago we finished the county fair and I have YET to thrill you with the full report. But before I delve into that ancient history, I thought it would be fun to see a few photos of ANCIENT history. No, I'm not talking about Husband's 80s hair again. This time the short shorts and bad hairdo is on me.

I didn't grow up on a farm but I did live in the country, witness all the wide open space beyond our circa 1983 back yard. My first year in 4-H, I showed two sheep, Buckwheat and Alfalfa, named for the stars of the Little Rascals TV show popular in the 1950s (yikes).

My father built a sheep pen out of old pieces of mismatched fencing he dug up at my grandfather's farm and built a shelter out of some old garage doors. Image an igloo made out of garage door with tar paper nailed around to cover the hinge gaps. It was classy. We thought it was wonderful.

 

Much like my kids today, I was an eager little 4-H member. Here I am at the fair with our 4-H booth. Apparently, in 1983, I owned only yellow shirts and green shorts.

Our kids are the fourth generation of both our families to pack up some pigs, sheep or cattle and have the time of their lives at the county fair. So it makes me proud and a little nostalgic to think back on this year and all the many years we've been doing this.



And the kids are making us so proud. Here's Justin and Morgan who both earned stuffed pigs in their respective pee-wee showmanship classes.



Ryan in his second year of 4-H won champion with his ewe (female sheep), champion Ayrshire heifer (young female dairy cow) and champion in his age group for swine showmanship. He even won Best of Show for his decorated cupcakes. More champions than I had in my entire 10-year 4-H career.



Some day they'll look at these photos and wonder why we let them dress this way and what did we do to their hair. But they'll also have a good work ethic and experience with facing competition (the kind where not everyone gets a trophy). And they'll have a place they can go to remember their childhood, long after the garage-door sheep pen has been torn down.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Are You a Stamp Collecting, Bible Reading Maytag Customer?


I recently purchased a new Maytag dishwasher from the best furniture and appliances store that I am distantly related to, Schenck Furniture in Germantown. So yes, for the record I am 1/8 Schenck.

While you finish snickering about that I want to tell you about the super invasive and scary warranty card that came with my Maytag model MDB6709AWW2. The first thing you notice is that it is dual-language in French. This is interesting, I realized later, because I thought both Europeans and Canadians were crazy about corporations invading personal privacy.


After asking normal warranty-card-appropriate things like name, address, store, date of purchase, the Maytag card moves on to asking everything but my cholesterol level. Apparently, in order to let me know of any recalls or issues with my dishwasher, Maytag needs to know:
  • Our occupations
  • Household income
  • Level of education
  • The names of credit cards I use regularly
  • Whether I own or rent my home
  • If I am a stamp collector
  • Do I read the Bible
  • Have I vacationed on a cruise ship
  • Do I care about wildlife or environmental issues
  • If I go fishing or hunting or just like to shoot
  • My interest level in health foods
There is no indication on the card that this additional information is optional, however, there is some fine print. Let me summarize it here: We have cashed in on our good brand name to get you to give us a lot of valuable information for free, which we will immediately sell to the highest bidder and keep all the moolah. Actual sentence on the form: Please check here if, for some reason, you prefer not to participate in this opportunity.

Oh, I'm sorry Maytag. It was an opportunity for me. How ungrateful can I be?

Is it possible the Maytag repairman got so bored, he decided to do a little spam marketing on the side?

Appointment Pooping

  NOTE: If you do not want to read about my healthy bowel movement, well too late you just did. I recently became you-better-get-a-colonosco...