Big Equipment Farmer

Here's the Boss-Man farming the only way he knows how: Big equipment.

When driving by the CAT dealership, forget any conversation you might have been engaged in... someone just lost connection...and it wasn't me. "Uh, huh," I hear, from lips on the port bow of the truck, responding absently. Give it another block or so and he'll return to the land of human relationships, and pick up the dialog with no suggestion of distraction.

Most men hook their truck up to the travel trailer to move it. This is much more efficient, Mike might tell you. Some men may scoff. But then, every farmer knows his crop.

Have a truck that no longer runs, has flat tires? Need it flipped around? Say, try the a loader bucket!

Need a tree stump removed where there happens to be a hive nearby? Just wear your sister's beekeeper net!

No guts, no glory- or something like that.

Who said the Big Guy and I couldn't work in the garden together? We both move around soil with two hands and puff exhaust. My hoe turns delicate, detailed areas around beets and rutabagas, while his D3C XL (XL? duh.) cuts through hard pan and clay, falls trees, and shapes swaths of land.

I know women who require their husbands to shower before bed or keep clean fingernails. There's no doubt that makes housekeeping easier! For that matter, I know men who have a tidier dispositions than their wives, flannel wearing or not. As for me, give me a farmer, whatever the crop, covered in dust and smelling of diesel fuel-

White sheets can always be replaced!