Tuesday, October the 5th, 2004

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Barnyard Bulletin

Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw… I mean hay.

We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him.

As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual.

To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining.