Dropstone Farms

Now I love Craig’s List. I love what the site does, I love the architecture/usability of the site, and I love that the founder has stayed true to the vision of an accessible community site. And a measure of the success of Craig’s list in being an accessible community site is the number of posters who are clearly not what some corporate types refer to in “webinars” as “Young Digital Natives.*” As a result, there’s a lot of humor both intentional and unintentional. My current Craig’s List obsession is with the True Tale Of The Farmal Cub. For best results, pronounce “Farmal” to rhyme with “caramel” if you’re from Wisconsin and Harm’ll if you speak standard American English (EN-us).

There was an ad for a Farmall Cub tractor on the Craig’s List but, due to a typo, it was listed as a FARMAL CUB. So I clicked through based on equal parts fondness for tractors and amusing typos and what did I find? The following.

It's a Farmal Cub

Or the full ad:

Not to be confused with a baby elephant.

So that’s kind of weird. That someone would typo Farmall in such a way that it sounds like they’re selling a baby farmal. It does sound very cute. I want a baby farmal! And then the next day the following shows up:

Note the text. “Today’s ad should include a picture of the tractor instead of the baby elephant picture on yesterday’s ad.” Why!? How did this happen? I’m haunted. I don’t understand. And yet I love it. I love the tiny farmal cub.

*Have I lately mentioned how glad I am to not have that job anymore? Seriously.

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…but Mighty God King [You may safely assume that all links contain swears and off-color humor] a blog that’s primarily about comic books, jokes about bad science fiction and an unhealthy obsession with Rex the Wonder Dog has published a short essay on sustainable agriculture and responsible meat consumption.

My dog did this just the other day. (Stolen from Mighty God King with respect.)

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We got an email off a farming list the other day stating that a nearby greenhouse owner was moving and she was having a greenhouse sale of all the now-superfluous equipment. So I fired the truck up and went to see if I could find a bargain. I managed to pick up:

• A 55-gallon compost tumbler
• A smallish garden cart
• Six greenhouse table tops
• 12 brackets for building tables from 2×4s
• A hula hoe
• 12 large seed-starting trays
• Six tomato cages
• A mess of domes
• A billion seed flats
• A mess of small seed-starting trays

All for the princely sum of $87. I am awfully pleased with myself. In the spirit of giving back to the gardening , I offer up the following jpg.

Sources close to the Obama administration assure me that this is Tom Vilsack's own farm in Iowa.

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We pasture our chickens with a combination of a chicken tractor and electric mesh fencing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a good charge on the fence and, in combination with the dogs being friendly with the chickens and keeping predators down, we don’t turn the electric fence on. It’s just a big mesh pen.

However, in combination with the dogs’ fondness for chicken feed/poo, this can lead to some entertaining antics.

See below.

Ruby's life is extremely hard.

I helped her out as soon as I managed to a) stop laughing and b) take a picture.

Poor Ruby.

Update: Famous dog is famous.

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Sometimes someone writes a really well-researched and well-written book on our relationship with food and sometimes someone draws a smart-assed web comic about the same thing.

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