Things Dad Never Taught Me

After four weeks, I’ve reached the end of my stay at this farm. It’s been both a productive and educational experience. This is a list of the things I learned here that I doubt I would have learned otherwise. Sorry Dad, but this is where you really dropped the ball:

• Never stand behind a cow.
• Never use river rocks to build a fire pit or they’ll explode and kill you (happens more often than you’d think).
• Two hands on the auger—no exceptions.
• Invisible biting flies exist, and they can pass through solid objects.
• If your tractor isn’t working then you’re not swearing at it loud enough.
• Never offer a Mormon a beer.
• Wear gloves when using PVC cement, especially if you plan to hold a fork later that day.
• A donkey can take down a mountain lion.
• Always use a blunt knife to castrate a sheep or it will bleed to death.
• The British drink more than the French.
• Cigarettes bad. Cigars good.
• You can pack light and save a lot of money on laundry if you only change your clothes every other week. And if everybody around you is on the same schedule then the smell doesn’t matter.
• Black widows can’t get stoned (for the record, I wasn’t the one who discovered this).
• PBR has almost twice the alcohol of Miller, and the British don’t know that.
• Velveeta is great bait for catfish, but do you really want to eat something that just ate Velveeta?
  
• I will never find lasting happiness in life until I own a chainsaw.
• And a 12-gauge shotgun.

I also learned a lot of other stuff like weeding and fixing a tractor and building irrigation pipes and farming in general, but this list sums up what I like to call the “practical” knowledge.

Heading to a Montana farm in a few days. Can’t wait to see what I learn there!