Sigh.

A neighbor came by to return Farmer's cell phone yesterday.  He had found it in the middle of the street, along with a plaid tablecloth.  I don't think there's anything else to say about that, except that no one was surprised.  Not me, not the neighbor, and not Farmer.

The Quotable Farmer

About the screened porch room off the kitchen: "I don't know why there are all these flies.  I don't think there's anything dead in here."

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Raaaain

And by "cake" I mean "seeds."  As in, 20 or so packets of seeds, which aren't ever supposed to get wet except when you put them in the ground because otherwise they'll start sprouting and then you can't plant them and then you've wasted all your money.  I wasn't here when this happened, of course, but at least Farmer had the sense to take the seeds inside at some point during the rains.  The result is that I came back to a kitchen full of this:

To answer your inevitable questions: yes, that is a dinner plate; yes, it is sitting on the island in the middle of the kitchen with seeds drying on it due to Farmer's stupidity; and no, it was not alone.  Not by a long shot.

The Potatoes, Part II

You may remember that we planted potatoes a little late.  Nevertheless, Farmer was shocked when very few of them (like...1/16th of what we planted) came up.  But he had a plan, of course.  We would just plant something else in the rows of potatoes that hadn't germinated!  Brilliant!  So off he went to plow up the land.  When he was done, what do you think we found?  If you guessed "rotten, decaying pieces of potato with what appeared to be antlers growing out of them," congratulations.  Shockingly, the potatoes we had put in the ground had not simply disappeared in the intervening month or so as Farmer had assumed, and this made planting something else in those rows seem a little stupid.  The solution, of course, was to pick up the rotten, decaying potato pieces and their antlers (with our HANDS) and consolidate them all in one row, where of course they'll really grow this time.  For real.  Seriously.  We mean it, guys.  Come on.

How Not to Determine If It's Limestone

I said, "Farmer, I think I found the limestone powder you were looking for," and handed him an unlabeled bucket of white powder that had been sitting in the greenhouse.  What did he do?  He looked confused for a second, told me thanks but that wasn't the bucket he was looking for, and then he ATE SOME to see what it was.  Farmer's thanatos instinct appears to be overdeveloped.

Roundup of Ridiculousness

I know I haven't posted in a while, so here are some brief glimpses into farm life of late:

1. In the seven weeks that I've been here, Farmer has been to the grocery store twice.  The first time was on a day when it was pouring rain, and I had to beg him to go grocery shopping by pointing out the (many) items we lacked.  The second time was the other night, when Farmer decided to make lemon bars and realized we didn't have any unsalted butter.  Lemon bars, of course, are an urgent matter, unlike feeding the chickens or watering the crops, so off he went to the supermarket at 9pm.  By the time he got home, he realized it was too late to make the lemon bars anyway, so he made them the next morning.  While I was working.

2. Farmer hasn't been going to farmer's markets to sell things.  To be fair, this doesn't even seem to be about having more time for facebook--we legitimately don't have any vegetables to sell.  Actually, that might be more pathetic than if he were skipping the markets to sit on facebook.  Either way, Farmer pays for space at three farmer's markets for the season and he's been going to one of them.  One day he's going to show up and they'll have given his space to some random busker they've found around the block.

3. Now, I know that this is a farm and things are going to be messy and dirty, sometimes even in the house.  But there should not be mud in the bathtub when I go to take a shower.  Repeatedly.  Mud in the bathtub once?  Fine, you cleaned something off in the tub (I don't necessarily want to know what, or why the hose outside was not the venue, but whatever) and forgot to clean up afterward.  But multiple times? That makes me think it's some sort of house policy.  And that's not even getting into the dog hair that's all over the tub.  I'm pretty sure Farmer showers with his dog.

4. Farmer's Mother counts and analyzes the obituaries in the newspaper every week.  I don't know the specifics, like whether she compares multiple newspapers' obituaries or whether there's some sort of Excel spreadsheet involved, but I know that if you go to dinner at her house on a Monday she'll tell you all about the people who died that week: "60% of them were over 75, 12% had more than three children, five died of loneliness," etc.  The strangest part is that she manages to work this into conversation.  Don't ask me how, because I don't know.  Once the obituary talk has been introduced everything preceding it becomes a kind of blur.  It's like some sort of conversational rufie--you come to and you're smack in the middle of this fucking Albee monologue and you have no idea how you got there, but you feel vaguely violated.  One of these days I'll have to keep my wits about me and figure out how she's doing it.

Don't Feed the Chickens

The chickens aren't laying as many eggs this week--they're down by almost a dozen, in fact.  Farmer thinks it's because the heat is bothering them.  I think it's because he didn't feed them for five days.  Different farming styles, I suppose.