Lileks weighs in on the autosteer tractor, after seeing an image of Chuck-e-Cheese in a farmer's outfit, with his hat on backwards.
...no farmer puts his hat on backwards, okay? I don’t care if he’s one of those modern farmers who has the air-conditioned tractor cab with the GPS autosteer that turns the tractor at the end of the furrow (you think I’m kidding? Hell, you can read a book while you do the back 40 these days. You can take a nap. You can watch a DVD. I have no doubt there are internet-enabled tractors with satellite access that allow farmers to sit in the cab, turn on the autosteer, head for a chat room and bitch about rainfall.) NO FARMER WEARS HIS FEED CAP BACKWARDS.
Okay? Okay.
The bad news about these new tractors is that steering was about the only part of farming I was good at, and I wasn't all that good at it. The good news is that now if I fulfill my dream of buying a farm in
I was actually pretty good about carrying the irrigation pipes around, but its all circular irrigation now so my skill set has dwindled further. Its got to the point that there just isn't much physical labor in the game anymore. Gramps once told me to pull out all the weeds in the pasture, perhaps because there was no real work to be done, I don't know. After an hour the tuck was loaded 6 feet tall with Noxious weeds, and I was pushing it around the field for exercise. Grandma drove out to see what was wrong with the truck, which made me feel pretty foolish. We called grandpa saying that there was another dozen truckloads worth of weeds out there and he said, forget about it, we'll send a plane in. Least he didn’t nuke the field while I was out there: I once got downwind of some ammonia I was fertilizing with and I couldn’t taste food for a week.
The caricature of the old farmer being technology resistant is patently false, as far as I can tell. Who else routinely calls air strikes or uses satellite imagery to plan their season? Not that technological prowess is what makes them great. There are too many of those things to count, the least of which is their incredible 'dad strength'. Grandpa could lift up the hitch of an implement with one arm, lower the hitch of a tractor with the other, and hammer the pin in with his forehead. He’d do this while carrying his oxygen tank, all the while I'd be looking for a pry bar.
But the biggest thing you notice, coming from the city, is their ability to actually do things. Things you would worry about for days beforehand, they do without giving a moments thought. Drag a 40 foot wide implement down a city street, fix an engine, burn down a an old building, shoot vermin, and generally carry on. And that’s before Dinner, which is at noon.
You notice this general competency in the old guys, and the 12 year old kids. The contrast between what they do, and what your typical city bloke does, will give you pause. . Anyone who simultaneously holds a negative opinion of “flyover country” and any opinions about the nature and direction of this county, is dangerously ignorant.