In my graduating high school class, I was voted "least
likely to become a farmer." Actually, they voted me "most likely to
become a knucklehead farmer." Some of my classmates, honest to God, they
could take a rusty ole manure spreader that had been sitting outside, unused
for five years, and whip it into shape. For a pittance, they'd get it up and
running. There was one whose hat always smelled like skunk because after he
milked cows at the crack of dawn, he checked on all his traps before catching
the bus to school. I, on the other hand, was lucky if I got my teeth brushed in
time to make the bus. And neither my parents nor my grandparents had ever
farmed. Put it this way: I was also in the running for "most likely to
pour anti-freeze into the fuel tank of a tractor." OK, OK. There were no
such categories at Kutztown High. But my classmates, many of them farmkids,
definitely did not elect me "most likely to succeed." And so, as if
not to disappoint, I eventually became a farmer and I developed my own peculiar
corn-planting technique. It's called "start the little corns in the
greenhouse and then transplant them outside so they get a head start on the
weeds as well as the multitudinous insects and worms that stand between the
farmer and a presentable ear of corn. Although there is a small but growing
class of customer famous for peeling open an ear of unpurchased corn and
observing, "Aw, look at the cute little European Corn Borer," the
majority response is still "Eeew! A worm!" So here is Beth pulling
corn seedlings out of greenhouse plug trays:
Although I used to transplant the corn by hand, this year
I've taken advantage of technology. If I could only drive the tractor in a
straight line. 
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