Country Life

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10 things we’ve learned of late on Our Green Acres…

1. Close the gate behind you — or you just might find a horse up near your house, or…um…pool.
2. While these two words may rhyme, ‘chert’ is not to be confused with ‘dirt.’
3. A rain gauge is a necessity. Because when you go to town, folks are likely to ask how much rain you got.
4. If you spread a couple of big truckloads of real good dirt in the pasture to fill in dips and rough spots and then it rains, guess what your freshly bathed horses will do, and do, and do?
5. Whenever you hear shotguns ringing out from your neighbors’ properties, there’s (usually) no cause for alarm.
6. If you decide to let your chickens free range, they will “free range” in your driveway, your vegetable garden, your garage, your flower beds, on your front doorstep and in your poolhouse.
7. Grass carp are these big ol’ fish in the pond that eat the grasses down — but they don’t eat the bluegill, the bass or the catfish. That’s a good thing. Now, if only they’d eat the snapping turtles…and snakes.
8. When folks say “I’ll be by early,” that can often mean someone pulling up your driveway at 6 a.m.
9. If a bemused farmer friend tells you that you need a “mule,” he’s not talking about the four-legged kind.
10. And finally, do not go to the Farmers Co-op wearing gym shorts and a tank top.

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Just love browsing the magazine rack at Tractor Supply.

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P.J. O’Rourke describes his “bucolic” life in upstate New Hampshire in today’s WSJ.

“I decided to become a rustic squire when I was 32 and stupid as only 32 can be. Youth’s frantic idiocy doesn’t have the means. Simple-minded old age lacks the energy. In midlife, we’re as dumb as we get. So I bought land in New Hampshire—first a little, then more and finally too much…..”

Read the rest of his hilarious essay at wsj.com.