The humble Farmer

Have you ever met an old neighbor in a store or on the street who extended a withered hand and said, “My word. I thought you were dead.” If it hasn’t happened to you yet someday it will so please listen closely. Every day I record a bit of innocuous social commentary and email it to Public Radio Exchange. PRX, as it is called, might be described as a huge warehouse filled with bits and pieces of r...

Did you see the Today Show people sitting around in snowmobile suits? Well, they weren’t really snowmobile suits and they weren’t really bathrobes. My wife Marsha just told me that they are called Snuggies. Their point was that you can keep warm in a cold house by putting on one of these Snuggie things. Doesn’t it say something about our friends and neighbors who need to be told that if they dress...

My friend Tony says that it was 28 below in Portland, Maine this morning but that was probably after factoring in several variables. If you’ve ever watched the weather report on TV you know what I’m talking about. The temperature outside might be 15 degrees. When I was a kid, they’d let it go at that. But now, for some reason that I don’t understand, they try to make it sound worse by adding in a...

While seated at a dinner table you have heard people say, “Would you like some more spaghetti” or “Would you like some more beans”? But isn’t that another way of saying, “You’ve had two helpings already but would you like some more? So no matter how much of a trencherman might be sitting at our table, we try to say, “Would you like some spaghetti” or “Would you like some beans,” leaving out the “m...

People from away don’t understand how we do things here in Maine. I have over 100 rhubarb plants and I used to give away a lot of rhubarb. But my friends didn’t want to take it when I said it was free, so I started snapping a rubber band around a handful of it and putting it on a chrome plated farm stand out by the road. You get it by the bunch, because if I ever put it out by the pound, even thou...