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Spring 2022
A Letter from the Secluded Sisters of the Missouri Valley
I’m not a very good farmer. I help out around our farm and I’m perfectly competent, but I’m always taking orders from someone smarter. We all have our own strengths and mine isn’t spinach. So sue me.
I don’t mind taking orders. I don’t mind asking for help. I don’t need to be the best at everything. And with the Secluded Sisters of the Missouri Valley, I never feel self conscious about that. With my extended family, it’s another story. My dad’s family are farming savants. My grandparents were farmers, but most of my aunts and uncles live in town with non-farming jobs. Somehow, however, they still know three times as much as I ever will about seed specifics and soil erosion and tractor repair. (I know more than they do about the history of mysticism in Christian contemplative prayer, but that very niche topic never seems to come up in conversation. Plus, one of my uncles double majored in Theology, so it might not even be true.) They will try and make polite conversation with me about something like irrigation--you know, because I live on a farm-- and I’ll say something dumb like, “Glug glug, gotta love that water, baby!” and then rush off to shove rice krispies treats into my mouth until the shame goes away.
Sometimes, I am able to convince Elli or Max to come with me. In my head, if I am sitting next to someone who can talk about fertilizers, I get partial credit. In a week or two, my uncle Philip will just remember my face and something about nitrogen and dirt; and I will siphon some of that credibility. Credibility, of course, I do not deserve. This paragraph contains all of the information I know about fertilizer.
Elli and Max were busy, so I needed a new idea to avoid looking dumb. My ingenious plan: I went to the library and got a copy of The Almanac for Farmers. It is possible that the book is more helpful than I realize. That said, the book sure seemed pretty dumb.
The main thing I knew about The Almanac for Farmers was that it gave guidelines for when to start planting. And to do that, the Almanac tells you what the weather is going to be for the entire year in every part of the country. It breaks it down by weeks and regions. I could have guessed there would be something like this, but--seeing it in front of me-- it felt a bit like someone had printed out the results of a cootie catcher.
Before the official weather report, they gave a preamble about the accuracy and history of their meteorological fortune telling. My confidence wasn’t exactly bolstered by the revelation that their method--though changed and adjusted over the years--dates back to the 18th century. On the rare occasions that I feel nostalgic for the distant past, it is never a nostalgia for their science. I have no desire for a steam engine toaster.
The preamble boasts that their weather predictions are 80% accurate. B-. If I’m paying for a book (or driving into town to check it out of the library), I tend to want A level material. I want the author to be an expert. But I wasn’t convinced that this 80% was all that much better than I could have done on my own. What score do I get if I guess that June is going to be hot and January cold? It’s been a little while since I’ve had to take a test, but I feel like if you gave me a study guide and weekend to cram, I could pop out a B+ without charging you $9.
Like, when they wrote that the winter in Connecticut would be “snowy and cold,” do you think they patted themselves on the back for a job well done? Or snuck out to an early lunch and hoped no one asked, “As opposed to what? All of those balmy, tropical Connecticut winters?” I checked last year’s Almanac to see if they predicted that terrifying February cold snap. They didn’t. But that 20% margin means they get to fuck up two whole months before they even have to start worrying.
More interesting to me than the weather was the astrology. If you are one of the *apparently* millions of hard working farmers who are waiting for the stars to tell you what to do, The Almanac for Farmers can help. They have the ideal days for tasks like cutting hay, picking fruit, and castrating animals. Imagine the sort of karmic chaos we must have introduced to our farm by picking our “below ground vegetables” without the slightest care for the position of Jupiter! I can only hope that bulls castrated between April 5th and 7th realize how lucky they are to be on a farm with an Almanac reader.
We don’t have animals here at the Secluded Sisters of the Missouri Valley, so the mating charts really opened my eyes to another world. The maximum ratio of male to female rabbits was listed at 1 to 30. It had never occurred to me what an unrelenting gangbang most farms must be. And rabbits are on the conservative end of the spectrum. For sheep, it can go as high as 1 to 75. For cattle, thousands. Thousands!
The ratio for horses was listed as 1 to 40, but the Almanac lets you know that the record is 252. This, of course, is useful to know in case one of your horses is a real dreamer. That said, if you do end up with the Joey Chestnut of horse fucking, don’t expect any accolades. There is no name. No picture. No statue of a horse making the most of his refractory period to have a little time to himself for once! But who knows? Maybe that was the horse’s preference. Maybe that’s his secret identity. By day, Jeff: the trail runner. By night, Jeff: the Burt Reynolds of horses.
After an afternoon of light reading, I gave up on trying to pretend that I was some food science expert. Instead, I figured I could lean into my strengths and repeat these jokes rather than contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. I got some laughs from my aunts and uncles and things were going pretty well, but then they started asking follow up questions; questions I did not know enough to understand, much less answer. So, I retreated and shoved rice krispies treats into my face until someone changed the subject.
Then I went outside and played my seven year old cousin in pellet gun tick tack toe. I lost three times in a row. Partially, I lost because I was too proud to lay on the ground, which makes it easier to aim. But mostly, I lost because my cousin knew what he was doing and I didn’t. I don’t mind. My cousin can’t roll a joint, he can’t speak Spanish, he has no bookkeeping skills; he’s fucking seven. We all have our talents. I’m happy enough with mine.
I don’t mind taking orders. I don’t mind asking for help. I don’t need to be the best at everything. And with the Secluded Sisters of the Missouri Valley, I never feel self conscious about that. With my extended family, it’s another story. My dad’s family are farming savants. My grandparents were farmers, but most of my aunts and uncles live in town with non-farming jobs. Somehow, however, they still know three times as much as I ever will about seed specifics and soil erosion and tractor repair. (I know more than they do about the history of mysticism in Christian contemplative prayer, but that very niche topic never seems to come up in conversation. Plus, one of my uncles double majored in Theology, so it might not even be true.) They will try and make polite conversation with me about something like irrigation--you know, because I live on a farm-- and I’ll say something dumb like, “Glug glug, gotta love that water, baby!” and then rush off to shove rice krispies treats into my mouth until the shame goes away.
Sometimes, I am able to convince Elli or Max to come with me. In my head, if I am sitting next to someone who can talk about fertilizers, I get partial credit. In a week or two, my uncle Philip will just remember my face and something about nitrogen and dirt; and I will siphon some of that credibility. Credibility, of course, I do not deserve. This paragraph contains all of the information I know about fertilizer.
Elli and Max were busy, so I needed a new idea to avoid looking dumb. My ingenious plan: I went to the library and got a copy of The Almanac for Farmers. It is possible that the book is more helpful than I realize. That said, the book sure seemed pretty dumb.
The main thing I knew about The Almanac for Farmers was that it gave guidelines for when to start planting. And to do that, the Almanac tells you what the weather is going to be for the entire year in every part of the country. It breaks it down by weeks and regions. I could have guessed there would be something like this, but--seeing it in front of me-- it felt a bit like someone had printed out the results of a cootie catcher.
Before the official weather report, they gave a preamble about the accuracy and history of their meteorological fortune telling. My confidence wasn’t exactly bolstered by the revelation that their method--though changed and adjusted over the years--dates back to the 18th century. On the rare occasions that I feel nostalgic for the distant past, it is never a nostalgia for their science. I have no desire for a steam engine toaster.
The preamble boasts that their weather predictions are 80% accurate. B-. If I’m paying for a book (or driving into town to check it out of the library), I tend to want A level material. I want the author to be an expert. But I wasn’t convinced that this 80% was all that much better than I could have done on my own. What score do I get if I guess that June is going to be hot and January cold? It’s been a little while since I’ve had to take a test, but I feel like if you gave me a study guide and weekend to cram, I could pop out a B+ without charging you $9.
Like, when they wrote that the winter in Connecticut would be “snowy and cold,” do you think they patted themselves on the back for a job well done? Or snuck out to an early lunch and hoped no one asked, “As opposed to what? All of those balmy, tropical Connecticut winters?” I checked last year’s Almanac to see if they predicted that terrifying February cold snap. They didn’t. But that 20% margin means they get to fuck up two whole months before they even have to start worrying.
More interesting to me than the weather was the astrology. If you are one of the *apparently* millions of hard working farmers who are waiting for the stars to tell you what to do, The Almanac for Farmers can help. They have the ideal days for tasks like cutting hay, picking fruit, and castrating animals. Imagine the sort of karmic chaos we must have introduced to our farm by picking our “below ground vegetables” without the slightest care for the position of Jupiter! I can only hope that bulls castrated between April 5th and 7th realize how lucky they are to be on a farm with an Almanac reader.
We don’t have animals here at the Secluded Sisters of the Missouri Valley, so the mating charts really opened my eyes to another world. The maximum ratio of male to female rabbits was listed at 1 to 30. It had never occurred to me what an unrelenting gangbang most farms must be. And rabbits are on the conservative end of the spectrum. For sheep, it can go as high as 1 to 75. For cattle, thousands. Thousands!
The ratio for horses was listed as 1 to 40, but the Almanac lets you know that the record is 252. This, of course, is useful to know in case one of your horses is a real dreamer. That said, if you do end up with the Joey Chestnut of horse fucking, don’t expect any accolades. There is no name. No picture. No statue of a horse making the most of his refractory period to have a little time to himself for once! But who knows? Maybe that was the horse’s preference. Maybe that’s his secret identity. By day, Jeff: the trail runner. By night, Jeff: the Burt Reynolds of horses.
After an afternoon of light reading, I gave up on trying to pretend that I was some food science expert. Instead, I figured I could lean into my strengths and repeat these jokes rather than contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. I got some laughs from my aunts and uncles and things were going pretty well, but then they started asking follow up questions; questions I did not know enough to understand, much less answer. So, I retreated and shoved rice krispies treats into my face until someone changed the subject.
Then I went outside and played my seven year old cousin in pellet gun tick tack toe. I lost three times in a row. Partially, I lost because I was too proud to lay on the ground, which makes it easier to aim. But mostly, I lost because my cousin knew what he was doing and I didn’t. I don’t mind. My cousin can’t roll a joint, he can’t speak Spanish, he has no bookkeeping skills; he’s fucking seven. We all have our talents. I’m happy enough with mine.
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