Private lists scratched out in notebooks help us organize our lives: bread & milk, phone Dad, pick up mower, dental appointment....
And lists delve deep into human experience, according to some. In a recent newsletter, Maria Popova quotes the writer Umberto Eco: “The list is the origin of culture."
Popova points out that the writer-philosopher Susan Sontag once made lists of her likes and dislikes. The result was intriguing, kind of like a cross between song lyrics and a map of the human psyche.
I was inspired to try my own list, pretty much off the top of my head.
Farm things I like:
Holsteins
Big round bales, bale feeders and bale wrap
Remote-controlled pivots
Google maps of farmland
Meadow larks
Grass waterways
Big bluestem
Yield maps
Corn stubble sticking out of snow
Farm ponds with bass
Unmowed ditches
Drinking well water
Guidance systems
Exiting an interstate to a county road
FFA
Things I dislike:
Bad movies about farmers
Dehorning cattle
Sunburn
Litter
Clean tillage
Hail
Accidents
Smell of freshly applied liquid hog manure
Soil erosion
Water pollution
Drought
Astronomically high land prices
Fear & greed
Gossip
Bad seed caps
Whatever it is that’s killing the chickens now
Sow crates
Junk in windbreaks
Trampled stream banks
Abandoned farm houses
Decrepit upright silos
More things I like:
Simmental cattle
Hampshire pigs
Home canning
Plum thickets
Odor of cattle barn
Auto-steering
Barn cats
Women driving tractors
Smell of fresh-cut alfalfa
Big gardens
Radar weather maps
Grain legs
Pneumatic planters
Wild turkeys
Flying farmers
Rain in July
