Farmer

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Farmer

Looking back at my life, I cannot but conclude that I was tremendously suited to become an Agriculture Consultant and Specialist.

I still remember my first day at a farm.

For those of you share my background a Farm is a kind of a building in the middle of a lot of weeds, with a lot of machinery, they call it tractors, and a lot of pets, they call it cows or pigs. For unknown reasons, rats are neither pets nor farm animals, so what are they?

On a farm they do not have television sets, so you sit in a tractor an stir at a landscape one way, then turn around and look at the landscape the other way. Quite often when you turn around you discover that you forgot to couple the sawing machine to the tractor, which makes, says the boss, for uneven crops. It is a big joke they like to pull on people from the City, pretending that these little granules will later produce weeds that will produce bread. You know me, I am not the one to contradict the boss (in front of him) so well, if he wants it that way.

Tractors are very good for mathematics and language. I wish to thank my readers who have expressed their gratefulness for the mathematical riddles I propose. Here is another one:

Knowing that the field is 2 kilometer long (that must be 10 miles or seven furlongs or what?) that the tractor runs, when running, at one kilometer an hour, how much time will it take to make one run? Now add to this that as you are rather tired, you fall asleep after fifteen minutes, how long will it take for the boss to discover that you are sowing the forest and not the field?

For those interested in languages, especially Scandinavian languages, how many interesting words will you learn when the boss discovers you asleep at the wheel of the tractor in the middle of the forest, the sawing machine sawing and sawing expensive seeds?

That kind of hanging rubber looking thing that hangs under the cows, is not the bladder, or rather it is some kind of different bladder. From it comes something they sell to gullible people as milk. Nobody on he farm would want to touch that stuff, far less drink it. That rubber things with extending handles is covered with cow shit. The Boss had something about cleanness, must have had a very demanding mother when he was kid, and he always wanted us to have one of these stinking rags coming from a container where the water and disinfectant have not been soaking for a week, really nasty stuff, and he wanted us to spread the cow shit around the rubber thing, pretending that the milk would be better after that, great joker my boss; My boss he also had a fetish about flies, as some girls have about spiders, always wanted us to kill the flies in the dairy, who would keep us company then?; but when the flies are getting to friendly, I gill give you a tradesman's trick, just spray the insecticide on the rubber thing and you can work peacefully.

Sorry, I got diverted by memories. Still, it is quite marvelous that I retained these memories as I used to have the Saturday and Sunday milking, just to help my friends, the fact that it was double pay being only accessory, and as you know on a farm (if you do not remember what a farm is, either see, the first paragraph or your doctor), well as I was saying, on a farm, on Saturday you have a huge hang over from the Friday night but it is nothing compared tot he Sunday morning hang over, and knowing that you are sensitive people,I will not say anything about the Monday morning, possibly as we are here to teach you, it does not matter when you vomit into the bulls foodstuff, they love it.

Back to my first day at the farm.

Farms as you may have noted are not located in cities. So, when planning to meet someone on a farm, plan to travel, and travel a long way. Being a city boy, I had overlooked that minor point. After having located the farm on a map, I was able to find where busses to nowhere were leaving from in Stockholm. The distance was 40 kilometers which for a farm feeder buss means passing by each and every farm on the way, sometimes double backing, the forty kilometer trip will be one hundred kilometers and an acceptable two hours trip. Remember when taking farm busses that the only farm where he does not deliver you on the doorstep is the one you are going to, so I had another mile to walk.

Being called up, I was received by the farm manager. It was one of these remnants of the feudal days, a farm of 4000 hectares, about 200 workers and ten whip boys. The farm manager came me a very deep and inquisitive test that must have come from one of those psychological tests they used in the army to identify spies, he asked me

<< what is your name? >>

The police officers in Kenya and Zambia must have read the same psychological books.

My reply appeared to leave him dumbfounded, he did not know he would have to sink to such depths, but I was told that to-morrow I would be in the dairy.

To-morrow?

For the meeting with this very High Standing Officer I had put on my best clothes;The choice had not been utterly difficult, I had only one set of clothes may sneer at us town boys, but I sort of guessed that a blue suite, however old and ill fitting it may be would not be the thing to wear if you read the "Gentlemen's Recommendations" in Farming Quarterly.

So, back to Stockholm were to my luck the only Super Store that was still open was the most expensive. I bought an animated color rich shirt, trousers, yes I think two pairs will do, you think that they should not stretch 20 centimeters below my shoes, does not matter really, just pack them, boots (Boots that the Connoisseurs wear for their Outings in the Wilderness). In spite of the price, it was poor stuff I bought, 25 years later when I gave it to my gardener, I found a hole in the shirt and one of the seams of the trousers had widened. You really cannot trust anybody.

By that time the buss driver thought that he should call me by first name as I appeared to have moved into the buss.

Who says that midnight is not a good time to arrive at a farm, find your new room (key, what key?) wonder how you will wake up at 5 O' clock to have the morning meal (nobody would insult that meal by naming it breakfast, the point being to stuff as much food as you could into your stomach). I solved the problem by not sleeping.

In the morning a very old lad who was to be my new boss and mentor (he must have been nearly twenty but still going strong) bade me to jump on his motorcycle and off we went to the bull farm. He immediately introduced me to the most sacro-saint rules, on arrival, we took out our thermos and had a cup of coffee. for you city people, do not use these plastic thermos bottle with plastic cups, use metallic one with metallic cups, coffee is just a name that is being used for convenience.

The I got my first instructions :

<< Muck the shit from the bulls.>>

Mucking was rather a riddle;

Shit, yes, I understood; Why it had to be moved to a heap was beyond me, but if you start questioning all the mysteries of the Universe, there would be no end.

Remained the key question : Bulls????

I would beg you not to be derisive at me, I knew quite well that bulls were brown while milking cows would go in all kind of black and white robes (you remember that dress Caroline of Monaco was wearing at the opening of the Season, well something like this). Here the problem was compounded by the fact that they were all brown and brown red. Here, well I am here to train you, to make the difference between a heifer and a bull, it is not that difficult, if they look stupid, they are milk cows, if they look like something that has been under very heavy sedation after being locked into a White House for Maniacs and Killers, they are bulls.

The task strained my intellectual capacities but with a bit of guidance, I did my first day. Little did I know how my second day would start.

When we were assembled to receive our daily task, the Superior God responsible for our sufferings told me:

<< you there, what the hell is your name, do you think I have all the day to remember the name of all smart boys?, you there, you go and weed the wheat >>

You can see how devious and dangerous that man with, trying to trick me the second day with similar sounding words, definitively he had passed the major grades with honor at theTorture Institute.

Weed?

Wheat??

Being given a hoe, I was able by an inductive thinking followed by a deductive analysis, that I was supposed to use the cutting part of the instruments to cut something. As everything around the farm was grass, as the tool was quite small, there was a question as to whether this was a strength test or an intelligence test?

Hints given by other slaves, indicated that I was to go to a weed field and select at random some weeds and cut them out and put them into a bag. As one elderly fellow slave (nearly 25) told me

<< but make sure the boss never see the weeds you have cut out and put into the bag >>

All my life was to continue in the same pattern.

At the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) I was given by my boss the task of organizing the Management on Computer. (Management???? , Computer????)

Later on in France, when a friend suddenly got a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital he declared to the Bosses that I was a respected specialist of UNIX, and next day, I was running a set of 20 UNIX machines over an area large like the state of Alabama. I still, at moment of leisure, wonder whether I should not check on what UNIX possibly could be. I lasted three months in the job until my friend could come back and during that time I repaired UNIX machines, sweated at night over bogged programs, shouted at manufacturers about dirty Hard Disks that always failed, even made bills to customers;