Making a list of farm likes...and dislikes

[John_Walter]

Magazine editors have long known that their publications sell much better if they include lists on the covers: ten tips for managing your money; seven ways to build better relationships; a dozen undiscovered, inexpensive vacation spots to visit this summer. That sort of thing.

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