Bugging The Farmer

While tracking The Farmer the last few days I have seen him travel to and from his wheat fields to watch it progress from seed to grassy plant.  I find that following him is not enough and I would like to hear more.  In order to listen in on him better I stuck a "bug" on the brim of his cap that will transmit everything he says to a computer where it is recorded.

The weather seems to be a very popular subject with The Farmer especially when talking about the wheat fields.  How much has it rained?  Looks like a sunny day today.  Will we have frost in the morning?  After studying the recordings I wondered if he had anything else to talk about.

Then I heard something very intriguing.  The Farmer, when talking to his children, asked the question if they knew about the, and the next part was a little garbled from a baby crying, but it sounded like he said the "wooly bull."  Then he told them they should listen to the "pharaohs."  I am convinced I have stumbled across something very important about farmers in general.  I can see a vast conspiracy, perhaps a cult that they all belong to where they listen to their leader, obviously the pharaoh, and fulfill his commands.  But who or what is the wooly bull?  And what does it have to do with the pharaoh?

How big is this conspiracy?  How far does it go?  I'm going over the recordings again and again to find more clues.  I'm taking my findings to Agent 101 soon.  I have no doubt she'll be impressed.

Agent 230, reporting from the Udder Side.

A Poem of Thanks

Agent 162 runs a lending library from her stall and considers herself a "literary" cow. To celebrate Thanksgiving and #FoodThanks, she wrote a poem.  I asked her to share it but she was a little embarrassed and refused.  She's holding my copy of All Creatures Great and Small hostage to try and prevent me from posting the poem but I'm going to share it anyway.  I think everyone should read it.

Here's her poem:

For the hay so green and tasty
I give thanks.
For the silage of wheat and corn
I eat night, noon, and morn
I give thanks.
For my milk that goes in the tank
For the glass that you just drank
Please give thanks.

Agent 101, from the Udder Side, thanking The Farmer and everyone else who provides the food, feed, and fiber for us all.

New Agent on the Farm

Before his alarm clock rings I am waiting.  When The Farmer's truck pulls into the night pasture to bring the cows in for the morning milking I am waiting.  The moon is to my back as his headlights strike me.  I go in with the other cows, but I am watching.

I am a new agent on this farm and I take my job seriously.  Parties, dancing, and the theater are not on my mind.  I believe in discipline so much I had the word tattooed on myself.  Okay, maybe I chickened out after the "D" hurt so bad and didn't get the "iscipline," but the meaning is still there.

I intend to watch The Farmer and report every thing he has done. Anything and everything will go in my report.  I will get photos, fingerprints, boot prints in fake poo, and a dna sample before the day is through.  I will know everything about him as well as I know my own black and white hair patterns. I graduated my class moo-a cum laude and I make no mistakes.

While The Farmer milked and fed the cows and calves I was always lurking behind the corner of the barn just outside of his peripheral vision.  Interesting find of the day was when Agent 465's new calf failed to nurse on her own, The Farmer stepped in and helped the calf get started.

I will be watching and waiting.

Agent 230, reporting from the Udder Side.

Get Smart By Eating Dairy Products

Agent 468 had been watching The Farmer work on his computer when she saw him suddenly leap up, pour a tall glass of milk, and drink it down.  She then accessed his computer remotely to see what he was reading.  A Daily Dose of Dairy Boosts Mental Performance was the headline of the article by the University of Maine and the University of South Australia.  Here's the most important line in the study:

"Consuming dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt at least once a day was associated with greater performance in mental functions including verbal memory, visual-spatial memory, organisation and abstract reasoning, compared with those who consumed dairy less frequently."

I can paraphrase the study by saying it simply says eating dairy products may make you smarter.  This isn't exactly news to us.  I'd like to say this is another way we share our superior bovine technology with people.

You don't have to be a secret agent cow to realize how important this study is to the world.  In order to spread this news and help dumb  not-so-smart people everywhere, I asked agent 228 to create an animated video.  The first version was in "moo" and the one below has been translated into English.



Agent 463 wrote a virus, cowpie.exe, and installed it on The Farmer's computer. It will begin sending the video out to everyone in his email address book and replicating itself on the recipient's computer.

I hope our work here will improve the lives of people everywhere.  I can imagine dairy products like chocolate milk will be offered without question at schools now. Eating ice cream might become mandatory before taking ACT and SAT tests.  I also see a well deserved promotion in my future.

Agent 101, reporting from the Udder Side.

The Back Field 500

It has been a long night.  I've been looking over the video footage of The Farmer as he rode on the tractor yesterday afternoon.  Here's a sample of what I've been seeing.



This is like the most boring Nascar race I've ever watched!  All right turns and no car wrecks!  And there's like 272 laps to go!  Couldn't I have been given something else to do more exciting?

Okay, okay, it really isn't that bad.  At least The Farmer was doing something important.  He was tilling the soil so that wheat (and a bit of ryegrass for color and flavor; yum!) could be sown for the spring harvest.  This field was the only one that had to be done like this.  The others were all no-till which means he just sowed the wheat without working the ground any at all. Unfortunately the field in the video was too hard to plant like that and if he hadn't worked the ground up then many of the seeds might not have grown very well.

At least I've got the spring harvest to look forward to and all that delicious wheat silage.  Until then, lets see, The Farmer is now on lap 346.

Agent 226, reporting from the Udder Side.