Important Farm News

I got a letter the other day, from the evil, yet saucy bureaucracy of the United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) stating that my "farm (#12841) has base acres that might possibly allow you to enroll into the CCC-509, Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program (DCP Contract or Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program for FY 2009."

Sounds rather stimulating doesn't it? I have absolute no idea what they were talking about, but I eventually gathered that there was a possibility that if my crop did poorly enough (what crop? Did the satellite photos really show how badly my potatoes did this year? That raises all kinds of questions in my mind!) that apparently I am eligible for loans, grants, etc., apparently to subsidize my poor potato crop.
Then it went though a long list of reasons why I was NOT eligible for these. Toward the bottom of the paper where it gave examples of allowances for the exemptions from the disqualifications of counter-cyclical payments, or average crop revenue election payments. Still quite bewildered, but trying to (probably out of sheer self-loathing) figure out what they are getting at, I finally realize that I don't qualify for any of this stuff.

However at the very bottom of the paper it states that I do qualify "if the farm is owned by either of the following:

• Limited resource farmer or rancher


• Socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher

Being a woman with 50% ownership interest in the land now meets the socially disadvantaged requirement."

Now THAT caught my attention! Sorry to bore everyone to tears with all this bureau-speak excuse for a language, but I was quite disheartened to hear the bad news that I was married to someone (and thereby being implicated as well; as I own half of this farmlet) who is "socially disadvantaged." I was instantly discontent about my relationship with my wife.

You see, the more I got to know the woman who was to be my future wife, the more convinced I was that I was indeed marrying "up." I knew she was full of cultural interests, art, classical music, and was in general one of the most creative people I knew, whereas I pretty much know how to swing a hammer. You see, I thought that I was really getting something special; real grade A, top shelf, quality spousal material here, and then I get this letter saying that my farmlet is demeaned into some sort of a 50-percentile, 2nd-best pariah, just because my poor decision-making process led me to make the poor choice to marry a-a-a- WOMAN! Sooo socially disadvantaged! And for her to drag me and our farm down with it! I am so embarrassed...

You must consider what this has done to my world view. We used to hold hands in public, and walk side by side; but today as we walked across the street today from our office to our bank, I caught myself edging away from her as I noticed people's stares. I admit it is a little intimidating being in public when married to someone on such a list.

I have a dilemma, however. How I can I get myself free of this "being disadvantaged"? I'm sure I'm like everyone else, I just want a level playing field, I don't want anymore disadvantages than the next guy, so what are my options? I guess one option would be a same sex marriage, but I'm pretty sure that would still put me on the same list, even if it were of interest to me and it were a viable option in Kansas. I guess my only option is to break the news to her that she is socially disadvantaged and send her packing.

I guess what I really need to know is the definition of "socially disadvantaged". I am assuming that if being a woman qualifies you, then being any type of minority also qualifies you, even though women make up 154,135,120 out of the 304,059,724 people that inhabit the US, making up nearly 51% majority of our population. Then, if you figure in the fact that there are 242,639,242 of these 304,059,724 that call themselves "white" and that 49% of them are most likely males that leaves 118,893,228. Since there is only 230,117,876 out of the original 304,059,724 that are actually considered adults (just over 75%) we will just guess at there being roughly 89,169,921 adult white males in the US. Then, if I have the good sense to leave my socially disadvantaged wife, so as to not handicap my little farmlet, and noting that 82% of adult men are married (presumably to a socially disadvantaged woman, thereby dooming whatever business they are in) that leaves me in a group of 16,050,585 of single adult white males which would put me in one of the smallest and therefore presumably most socially disadvantaged brackets in the 2008 population estimates, save a few other socially disadvantaged minorities, so I might be back in the same boat, anyway.

Anyway, I hope you haven't been bored out of your gourd listening to all this, but the long and short of it is that I'm really dreading telling my beautiful, creative, and much cultured wife that she is at a real social disadvantage to her lout of a belching, farting, ignorant husband. Somehow I'm not sure she'll be convinced anyway, despite what the USDA tells us. I'm just guessing that she'll just smile and make little affirming sounds to let me know that I did a good job in being able to read the mail...

FYI: all of the actual data came from the US census website, and most of it came from this page:

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=PEP_2008_EST_DP1&-geo_id=D&-ds_name=D&-_lang=en

Foster Ozark Adventure; part V

We drove down to the southern part of Missouri, to the little grand canyon; a collapsed cave that’s about 100’ deep. It is now a park, and some good federal employee decided to spend a bunch of money on building stairs all the way down to the bottom of the canyon. A big project, but very nice if you have 4 little kids that you want to get to the bottom; I have mixed feelings about those taxpayer dollars that were spent. The stairs are very nice, and we used them in exactly how they were meant to be used, but since they were federal dollars, I also realize that they could have been built for a tenth of what they cost… oh well.

From there we went on to Arkansas and camped in a very nice spot smack dab off of the Spring River. It was very isolated, quiet, and picturesque for about 15 minutes until a train went ripping by just on the other side of the trees, blasting its horn about 50’ away from the camper. This only happened every half-hour or so, but we were just struck how odd that it was that they didn’t mention that little detail in the website or on the phone when we called. Oh well, it isn’t like it ruined it for us or anything, and we didn’t actually ask. We are just staying here one night.

I was a little disturbed at how UN-affected my children were by the sight of a big black snake in the water at the edge of the bank when we first got out of the truck. I thought they would be all freaked out, but they just changed into their suits and grabbed big black sticks and piled in the river and played “snake” for hours.

The kids loved this river; they collected bags of shells and we saw some people fishing out in the middle of the river at one point when it was just POURING rain. He seemed quite unaffected by it, and we were all very impressed with his level of dedication of killing fish. I find it hard to imagine that much hatred toward any fish, but that’s just me. Maybe he got beaten with a fish as a child.

My family was not sophisticated enough to use poles when I was growing up; we just flipped them out of the river with our bare hands, in fact I’ve never caught one on a pole in my whole wide life. Looking at this misty, peaceful river after the rain almost made me wish that I fished, though. Maybe someday I will be able to work up enough animosity towards fish to go through all the trouble to do some “proper” fishing, but for now I think I’ve got enough things that I wish to see dead. (See varmint blog link below) http://thefecklessfather.blogspot.com/2008/06/rules-of-engagement-on-foster-farm-or.html
And speaking of the un-sophistication of my childhood, it strikes me as pretty funny that people travel around in these “camper” trailers and have the gall to call it camping, when you have water, electricity, full plumbing, (shower, toilet) full kitchen, and of course: air conditioning. Really roughing it, huh? While my folks weren’t into camping at all, my friends and I always thought that it would be a good idea, so we went, and went pretty often. Of course when you are in school, the only times that there really are to do serious camping is in the middle of summer and during Christmas break, so we did both. None of us had tents, but all my friends at least had sleeping bags; I didn’t, but I did have my grandad’s old army cot and a plethora of old quilts to pile up. Once I woke up covered in snow, but toasty warm.
Once during the summer we camped for several days straight and didn’t bring any food stuff, but brought rifles and one guy brought a fishing pole. (Well, of course we brought bacon, but that counts sorta like toilet paper- you cant really go without it!)
Anyway, my point is that I am a little distraught that my kids are growing up thinking that this is what camping is… I guess if I try very hard, that I can inflict enough hardship and misery onto them in other areas that they will acquire character. I know that I can count on my dad to give them “trashy jobs” when they go for overnights there.

F.O.A. Part IV

I have to say that my impression of Missourians is mellowing somewhat; we met some very friendly locals here, and in a tourist area, that can’t be that easy to do. Yesterday we went to the Alley Springs Water Mill, a large three story building that had a water powered turbine that could power any number of different machines, rather than the typical grist mill that had one wheel to the side just rolling around two stones together. It was built in 1894, cutting edge technology in its day, and it still works today. Well, not yesterday, it had a belt slipping, but they claim it ordinarily works. Another great thing about this place is it was right next to a cool spring-pond that had 81 million gallons of water dumping out every day. Pretty impressive to this Kansas boy!

Then we went to Rocky Falls, a beautiful waterfall area with a great swimming area. There weren’t very many people around, and the kids just loved climbing up the falls. Isaiah even got a chance to poop in the woods, and while he’s not a bear, he was wearing a ball cap with a bear on it!
Isaiah has really been more adventuresome than we expected; he usually is a pretty cautious boy, but he was climbing boulders and rocks and getting irritated at momma for asking if he wanted help. Stu is the one to worry about, though. As long as he has been able to walk, he has just been pretty fearless, but out here he has been a little monkey demon climber and risk taker, and crashing and burning does nothing to slow him down. You can actually see it on his face when he sees older siblings doing anything, he thinks: “those kids aren’t a bit better than me, so I gonna do it too!”, and then he does. You can’t take your eyes off of him for 5 seconds!

It has taken us a little time to figure out our “groove” of vacationing. I’m not so much the kind of guy that wants to “just relax”, so we keep pretty busy, but we can’t hardly move fast enough for the kids.

Say we just finish up lunch and are planning to go swimming. Brynn and I have been frantically cleaning up, finding swimming suits, applying sun block, digging up sandals for kids, packing towels, unhooking trailers, finding maps, etc, etc, ETC!!! The LAST thing I personally want to hear is: “I’m bored. I want to go swimming. Can we go swimming? Daddy, I want to go swimming! Daddy! Did you hear me? I want to go swimming!” After about 2 days of this, I was about to leave them there and just start over (can I say; I know what God was telling Moses about in the desert?)

But instead we just had the classic vacation lectures about good attitudes (I guess classic, we’ve not ever really vacationed like this before) and patience and getting along with each other. Emma even lost her marshmallow privileges the other night, a mighty blow to her, who ordinarily doesn’t care a flip about getting spanked (at least she won’t show it). They've shaped up and adapted nicely, though. It has been very enjoyable to be able to be around my kids so much. I don't feel like an absent father most of the time, but this week I feel like I’m actually able to be a father to them. I think that we are all benefiting from a little time of serious together-ness.

Foster Ozark Adventure, part III

Before we continue on from the last post, there are a few things about me that are important to know. I don’t swim well at all, and unfortunately, I can’t even blame the fact that I am too dense to float, since neither my dad nor brother can float, but can swim just fine, so I am just stuck being labeled completely uncoordinated. I can live with that OK, that’s not a big deal anyway; I never had myself pegged as a Michael Jordan type anyway. (I’m no sports guy, but I’ve heard that he’s a coordinated fellow).

The other thing is that I have spent almost my entire life, childhood and adulthood, wearing shoes. I enjoy the security of shoes. I prefer boots, hard-soled, and good for kicking things and people who need it. I've never felt compelled to get a “concealed carry” license for a gun; I figure that I can do enough damage with my shoes/boots if push came to kick.

But since I usually wear shoes, even in the house, except right before I get in bed, I have very tender feet. And since boots in the river don’t really make that much sense, I was bare foot when Gracie started screaming. So I’m stuck with a dilemma; do I slowly dog paddle down stream or do I sprint to the bank through the treacherously sharp, nasty foot puncturing rocks and dive in closer to my eldest child?

Well, since I still have Grace with us tonight, I guess you can figure that much out for yourself, but let me just say I am suffering jokes from my wife about being a “tender-foot” and “pussy-footing” around the campsite. In retrospect, I’m not at all sorry I did what I did, because there was this one redneck about halfway between Grace and I that started swimming towards her when she started screaming/gurgling, and I way beat him to her, but what do you expect? She wasn't his daughter. Anyway, to make a long story short, I pulled her out of the water by her braids and then promptly decided to spend the next 30 minutes shaking violently from the adrenaline rush. Thank you Jesus, Amen. And when I quit shaking, we had a talk about staying close to daddy in the river. Again, thank you Jesus, Amen.

Ozark Adventure; part II

After spending the night in the Norman Bates Motel version of RV parks, we hit the road early in the morning, to go back to where good honest, middle-middle class people park their shiny pick-ups and RV’s. We met the same park ranger as we had seen the night before there, a Mrs. M. Johnson, and asked her the best way to get set up with a good spot. She let us know that she was very sympathetic towards us and if we would just come back at 12:30, she would make a special effort on our behalf, but there was simply nothing to be done until after 12:00, 12:30 being even better.
We killed a few hours by me carrying everyone though the poison ivy, (I’m not allergic, at least yet –more on this later? -I hope not), fording the beautiful Jack Fork River several times, and the kids lugging many pounds of precious, beautiful rocks around. (I told them they could fill up the back of the pick-up with rocks for all I cared, but I wasn’t gonna tote them around, since I was already hauling all the water and Stuart on my back) Then we showed back up at 12:30 or a few minutes before to talk to the very helpful Mrs. Ranger M. Johnson, but couldn’t find a ranger anywhere.
We drove around every campsite for about an hour, then just parked the stupid truck in a spot marked “reserved”, and went swimming. I came back and unhooked, and went ranger-cruising. Luckily, I bumped into one pretty soon, and asked for Mrs. Ranger M. Johnson. He looked at me like I was stupid and said “She gets off at noon, hasn’t worked a Sunday afternoon for the last 8 years. Lucky gal, cause she gets to go to all them there horseshoe tournaments instead of me.” So much for sympathetic park rangers, but this guy was helpful enough, if a little bitter at Mrs. Ranger M. Johnson for hogging all the horseshoe tournaments, and before we knew it, we were set up and had the grill going.

Our swimming hole was a really sweet spot, complete with a little cliff to jump off of. We had a good time there, except just as I noticed that I only had 3 kids within 100 yards of me, I looked around and saw Grace waaaay downstream and as I yelled at her to come back I noticed her braids disappeared, then again. Then she started screaming/gurgling… For the sake of over-writing long boring blogs, tune in next time!

The Great Foster Ozark Adventure

We loaded the camper Thursday night, we loaded the camper Friday night, and we loaded the camper Saturday morning. Finally, at about 8:00 am, we loaded us up in the pickup and hit the road. As we wound our way towards Missouri, I had a bit of revelation. I have long noticed that many Missourians dislike Kansans, and now I think I know why; the closer to Missouri you get, the more the Kansas people act like Missourians. The most notable was in Fort Scott, where just a cursory drive through the town (only a few minutes from Missouri) revealed such interesting business characters as “Judy’s Iron and Plumbing”, “The Wolf’s Den Tanning Salon” (in a dilapidated old block building with no paint and a rusty tin roof), and even one place with a pig on the roof! No wonder Missourians don’t like Kansans, they think we look just like them! What’s to like? (My wife’s family excluded, of course…)
It took us about 10 hours to get to the Alley Springs Campground, only to find that the campsite we reserved lacked about 10 feet enough to accommodate the length of our camper. By this time it is pushing 7:30, but we thought we found the last spot available (without electricity, but at this point, who cares?), so we unhooked the fifth-wheel, and Brynn started supper. As some of you already know, if 7:30 rolls around and I haven’t eaten anything, usually I’m feeling pretty glum, or perhaps irritable is a closer description.
Anyway, to add insult to insult, after unhooking and getting camp started, I realize that there are 2 posts with the same number on them, and the one further from the road shows that someone has already reserved the spot we are in… So… I load back up, hook back up, and drive to the seediest RV park in the western hemisphere, I’m sure. The guy behind the counter could hardly be bothered to put down his PS3 game controller to look up at me, and certainly couldn’t be bothered to take the smoke out of his mouth, nor to put on a shirt. Oddly enough, their prices were higher than the much nicer, much cleaner state park, the only reason I can think of is that the crowd there was willing to pay a higher price in order to not have state park officials looking over their shoulders all the time.
But all in all, we had an uneventful evening; I finally got my supper, and the kids learned all about bikers and marijuana. Oh, and did I mention the RV park apparently featured a BAND!!! Lucky for us, we were the closest camper to the “stage”, so we didn’t even need to leave the trailer to listen to the old 70’s songs howled out by some brave soul determined to please his crowd of about 15 people, even though it was fairly obvious that he should have been lying down and sleeping long ago. Maybe tomorrow will bring better even better luck.

Garden Lore

So in preparation of the Great Foster Ozark Adventure, Wifey suggests that “we” (meaning yours truly) do some stuff in the garden before we leave, like pull up onions, beets, turnips, and dig potatoes. Since I have put off this task until the temps reached triple digits, I am not looking forward to doing it much, but if there is one thing I can do well, it is doing things I don’t want to do, anyway. So I grab my ‘tator fork, my four children, and my innocent bystander sister-in-law, whose only crime was to not having a pressing project at the very moment that this was going to take place.
For some reason, things weren’t that great this year, production wise. Out of close to 100 potato plants, we only harvested about 10 gallons, though it felt like 100 gallons when digging them out of clay dirt and it is 100 degrees. The rest of it did just “OK” this year as well. It comes as some small consolation that I do have one thing that never fails to grow, particularly in the garden when my children and I are working together. My stories!
I don’t know why I do it, its all just baloney to my older kids and it just confuses my younger kids, none of it makes any sense even to me. My sister-in-law thinks I’m demented and that my kids will grow up very messed up, not knowing who to trust, or when, but I’ve seen first hand that they figure out fairly quick when dad is feeding fibs. Like when we kept digging up Toads in the garden, they didn’t believe me that there is a specific Toad that migrates yearly from Canada, one hop at a time, comes and digs in freshly tilled gardens and then out of that buried toad comes a tuber plant… why else would that plant be called a “potatoad”? Seems like good logic to me. I even had my mother-in-law going for a bit later when I went inside about the migratory toad bit.
Other fibs include how we got our pond; a “herd” of geese were swimming up north and it got so cold so fast that the pond they were in froze around their bottoms. It scared them, and they started flapping and just took the whole pond south with them, until they got tired enough they had to land, and that was right on our place.- lucky us!
One time while at the river, I told them about the strange and mysterious “Goodyear” fish, that is round, black and has scales that look like treads in order lure small children into thinking that it actually an old tire so that it can tackle them and drag them into deeper water to eat them.
I do admit surprise, however, at the occasional tall tale that I can actually pull off. Take the other day when I was asked how the GPS worked; I carefully explained how I captured a small British woman (hence the accent) and put her in a box just under the hood of the pick-up, with just enough holes to see the road ahead with binoculars. Oddly enough this was pretty much absorbed and thought of as generally a good idea. I’m not really sure how I feel about that, but on my old truck I had a “self destruct button” that I was only to use when I knew that I was going to be caught by bad guys and had information that I couldn’t let them have. The only disbelief expressed by my girls at this point was that it was right there in the dash, towards the passenger side, and down low so it could very easily could be accidentally pushed, and thereby blown to bits. “Well,” says I “I never said it was a total picnic having a world-famous yet secret international spy for a dad.” It’s true; it isn’t a total picnic, neither is having a pathological liar for a dad, though.