Ever since moving to this quaint little hill town of roughly 4,000 souls (if farm animals have souls), I’ve tried to embrace more and more of the “country lifestyle,” from composting and growing vegetables, to building a very elaborate shooting range (stapling paper napkins to trees).

I found it helpful to ask advice from local farmers like the gentleman you see pictured here, but when I inquired about various fertilizers I could use while waiting for the compost to ferment or whatever the hell it does in the realm of Science and Boring Topics, he suggested some very specific race and religious groups. 

To use as fertilizer.

So . . . left to my own devices and a very fast retreat, I decided to try chopping up some home turf and planting a nice little crop of corn.

I went out and bought the very best soil, stuffed with nutrients and all kinds of vegetable vitamins and more stuff from the realm of Science and Boring Topics, trenching into very fertile soil to enrich it with even MORE fertile soil, more potent and powerful than a young Charlie Sheen with a gut full of fresh clams and loads of Viagra.

I swear that when I was finally finished, the damn ground was shaking like an earthquake.

And then my brothers and sisters, I placed each and every one of those precious golden corn seeds into a little divot EXACTLY as the seed package described, like tucking precious children into comfy beds, and then I gently filled the holes and patted the soil and chanted a sacred growing prayer used by Native Americans while showing our beloved Pilgrims how to survive that first tough winter near Plymouth Rock, before scalping the hell out of them and bringing out some of their cannibal side.[1]

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Those darn Indigenous!

Ahem . . . I watched over those seeds like a mother with her babes, watering and weeding and doddering about like the goofy old man I aspire to become, once those designer drugs of the eighties (combined with the more basic drugs of the seventies), finally take their toll.  I’m kind of banking on the cutting edge drugs of the nineties to get me out of THAT mélange!

Ah yes . . . where was I?

Corn croppin!!!  And so the cute little seedlings finally sprouted and grew, reaching up higher and higher as summer progressed, from a few inches to a foot, and ANOTHER foot, and then . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . .

Nope.  Two feet was average for about fifty plants, but as autumn gradually approached, a few bulges started to form on the branches, or whatever you want to call the leafy green things sticking out of the main trunk things, and then a LOT of bulging (Charlie Sheen again), with fine silky hairy tufty things you see on corn, and the bulges started to grow and grow and grow, until cold nights and browning leaves indicated we should HARVEST THE CORN CROP!!!

HARVEST TIME!!!

I wanted my daughter to experience this harvest first hand; this great American tradition passed on by those noble cannibals, so I let her pick the largest corn cob out of the four or five that actually appeared, and we photographed this end result:

Oh yeah baby!  Three inches of amazing maze, with several more four or five to go! 

Of course, this all reminds me of llamas, so here’s a great llama story:    

I used to work with this guy named Peters,[2] who was always very jumpy and easily scared.  One time close to the Christmas holiday, we gained excess to a large animal pen that was part of a property survey in Bloomfield, Connecticut, just north of Hartford.  I saw some sheep walking around, and a small stable at one end, but nothing that looked very large, and certainly not aggressive. 

I was tracking Peters and his prism through crosshairs in a total station (survey “gun”), humored by his furry Elmore Fudd hunting cap, complete with earflaps tied over his head and a little button nub on top.  All of a sudden, my eccentric little crew chief started panicking and ducking in frantic fits, covering up from some kind of aerial attack.

Taking my eye from the viewfinder, I saw the biggest damn llama in recorded history pressing forward, those goofy cartoon lips trying to pick the cap off Peters’ dodging head.  The animal was ENORMOUS with a weird, predatory expression, but still kind of comical.  Llamas have a Doctor Seuss-like quality to them, and hard to take seriously unless they spray saliva at close range, like their ruthless camel cousin.  They also kick the stuffing out of any coyotes threatening livestock, and many Connecticut farmers keep them for this reason alone.

The keeper came to Peters’ rescue, but the llama’s strange behavior was repeated once again, when we walked through the small stable, taping off building measurements. 

Luckily the keeper was alert and ready, but something about Peters really freaked the wooly animal out, and he started rearing up within very tight confines, kicking out like a wild stallion.

“It’s your crazy hat,” I told Peters.  “He thinks it’s here to take the sheep.”

Peters didn’t hear me in his bug-eyed panic, bolting out the door like a man on fire, but the beast stopped immediately, and I patted his heaving chest, which was a little higher than eye-level.

“You’re friend’s a strange one,” the handler said, glancing nervously out the door.  “In all my years, I’ve never seen a llama react like this.”

“Maybe your animal sensed something deep and disturbing,” I said, “like passing near a direct portal into Hades.”

It’s only fitting that we’re completely surrounded by llama farms now, and I’m often reminded of Peters’ llama attack when I see those big, wooly creatures hoofing about like humpless camels wearing sheik winter outfits.  Sheik and very perceptive.

This entire story reminds me of a recent corn harvest, and now I know where those little baby corns in Chinese restaurants come from!

[2] Name changed because he’s unstable and reads a lot.  He would definitely look me up.