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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for August 9, 2015.

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The humble Farmer's TV show is now on YouTube. Google "Robert Karl Skoglund" and they should come up.

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1. One day last spring I hauled tons of manure out of a neighbor’s henhouse. After dumping several truckloads of rich potential soil on my garden, a Christmassy feeling of generosity welled up in my throat and I thought I’d share a ton of my wealth with my old neighbor, Gramp Wiley. When I drove into his dooryard I said, “I brought you some chicken poop for your soil,” Gramp Wiley eyed the load with studied indifference and said, “Wellll, that stuff might disrupt the natural system I’ve got here. At present my pH content is just right.” He had never talked about the “natural system” or “pH content” before so I said, “Who you been talking to?” He said, “Well, my hippy friends taught me a lot about gardening. They have the best vegetables in town. They were good enough to check my soil and told me it already has enough potash, phosphorus and trace minerals like sulfur and molybdenum.” I couldn’t find any fault with that. All I know about gardening is clean out the henhouse and dump the chicken nutrients where you plan to plant the crops. He said, “They told me to stay away from the dichlorovinyl dimethyl phosphates and to spray only with pyrethrins.” I started to move back toward my truck. The lump in my throat that comes from cheerful giving had gone. He kept talking, “I do need more humus but chicken nutrients might be too strong and kill my good angleworms. It could also bring in aphids and cutworms. It might encourage slugs and weeds. I’m afraid you’ll have to sell that load to someone who doesn’t care what he does to his soil.” I said, “Oh I’m sorry you misunderstood me. There’s no charge. I’m going to give it to you.” Gramp Wiley said, “It’s free? Back right over by my compost heap and dump her right there. My grandfather always said there ain’t nothing that’ll raise bigger squash than chicken manure.”

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2. You know that ever since I found out who you are, I have been in awe of you. Thank you for listening. It is an honor and privilege to chat here with you every week. You have earned the respect of your intelligent friends who can recognize and appreciate ability. One of the other things I’ve learned about you, is that you have a remarkable mind. It is like a steel trap. You never forget anything so I know you remember our recent chat about the words we casually let drop to indicate our status in the community. We mention our clubs and the famous people we might have met over the past ten years. I wonder if social commentators like John Steinbeck or Michael Moor or Sinclair Lewis, who had to go to Europe to be appreciated for their genius and collect their prizes, needed to mention it to their friends? --- Anyway, aren’t these awards that you have had thrust upon you the ones that count? You didn’t go looking for it. You didn’t ask to be teacher or citizen of the year. You went about minding your own business and you were amazed when the award came looking for you. I remember the first time it happened to me. It was 1952, I was sitting next to Roy Swanson in the Tenants Harbor Baptist church, and they were about to announce the high school manual training woodworking award for the year. Roy and I both knew that it would go to Ralph who was the best carpenter in the entire high school. When they called my name I can still remember that Roy and I looked at each other with our mouths open. Fifty three years later, I was once again startled and flattered by yet another unearned honor. That morning, by first class mail from Machias, I was awarded an honorary life time membership in the Maine Black fly Breeders Association.

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3. The Maine Department of Corrections says an incarceration center for youth will become a facility for adults. In 40 years can you see it becoming a nursing home? We are glad to see that the state is into long range planning. Has anyone considered shorter sentences for non-violent offenders?

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4. The other day I walked up through Waldoboro village. 250 years ago at least two of my ggg grandfathers lived in Waldoboro, so I should feel at home there. Walking through Waldoboro is a wonderful experience. A little bit to the northward of the funeral parlor some of the lawns are overgrown with gigantic trees and you wonder if anyone lives in the huge old houses that set way back in from the road. There is no grass on the lawns, because no light can get in through the huge trees. I’m only talking telling you this because there was a 17-foot length of granite about a foot or less square in a stone wall out front of one of these old houses. I paced it off to be sure, because it grabbed my attention. How often do you see a 17-foot length of granite less than a foot in diameter? I've never seen anything like it. You wink, and a piece of granite like that breaks in two. Even a granite hitching post that is only four or five feet long will break in two if you drop it on something hard. I was brought up next to granite quarries. My father cut paving in quarries before the war, and I have handled my share of granite. I’ve seen a lot of granite. Someone who collects unique stones would pay a lot for a stone like that. 17 feet long. Nowadays, of course, they could easily saw it out, but wouldn’t you say that it was impossible to take a hammer and chisel and cut anything like that. Unless you were Donatello.

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5. This month I am selling rhubarb that I would have thrown away in May. Oh, it's good rhubarb, but the stalks are short and spindly and take forever to pick. So when you have prime rhubarb in the spring, rhubarb like this is not worth bothering with. But rhubarb is scarce in the summer. I should have picked each plant down to nothing, but forgot to do it. And when you leave 10 spindly stalks on a plant, you continue to have 10 spindly stalks and it does not regenerate itself. My friends might find one bunch on the chrome plated farm stand in the morning. If there is none there, they know enough to come in and ask. And I’ll go out and scrape together something for them. 100 more rhubarb plants would be none too many. But I'll be working on the solar panel rack today. I have 8 more PV panels that will give me 30 panels generating electricity for me. Putting money in my pocket every time the sun shines. So replanting rhubarb will have to wait. What do you do when you have to decide between putting up more solar panels or putting more rhubarb on the farm stand? I’m the humble farmer at g mail dot com.

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6. I just stumbled on this old letter from long time radio listener Kevin Barnard in Ogunquit, who has also been a good friend for over 30 years. Kevin made most of those beautiful redwood signs all inlaid with gold leaf that you see down in Ogunquit. This is what Kevin wrote about his handsome brother Mark, who at the time he wrote it, was very popular with young ladies: “Mark has been down to one woman for some time now. I had to pick him up at the York Hospital yesterday.” Good luck Mark. I’m married to one like that myself.

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7. One day my brother in law Mark Sisco called to tell me that in a Mark Trail comic strip, Mark Trail is standing on an oyster bar ankle deep in water, surrounded by hungry sharks. Mark Trail is saying, “I’m in big trouble. I’m surrounded by sharks on this oyster bar and the tide is going out.” My brother in law thought that this was funny and said that Mark Trail wasn’t going to get in trouble as long as the tide was going out. But anyone who thinks about this knows that although only a very few men have been eaten by sharks, many men have been undone after eating a few oysters.

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8. Are we born incompetent or is incompetence thrust upon us? After 25 years of being married to Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, I now wonder how I survived my 20 years between 34 and 54 as a bachelor. I might now be compared to an appendage that has atrophied from lack of use because I no longer know how to do anything. What do you suppose would happen to me if I ran through a load of wash and hung it on the line? There is no way on this green earth that I would do it right. If you’re married to a Type A woman you know what happens when you try to help by making the bed. Yes. She tears it apart and makes it right, with the corners tucked in and the sheet folded down at the top --- even though Martha Stewart couldn’t tell the difference when the bedspread is on. You finally give up because she says it is easier for her to do it the first time than it is to tear your work apart and then do it over again. Mow the lawn and she mows it again the same evening with the blade set down to the dirt. Help her with the dishes? Only if you do want trouble in your marriage. You might have heard some of our young so-called experts bleating the mantra, “You have to work at a marriage. Marriage takes a lot of work and effort.” This is not true. I never worked at our marriage and I never will. For 25 years I have simply stood back and got out of the way.

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9. I think about things. If you also think about things, it might be because you don’t have enough to do and I suggest that you find something to occupy your hands. This is why they say idle hands are the devil’s workshop. If you are busy you can’t think and thinking does not always give you a productive feeling of well being. One morning I was thinking about James Bond, which you might agree is about as unproductive as you can get when it comes to thinking. Because you have never wasted your time thinking about Bond, James Bond, you should know that James Bond is a good guy who zips about the globe while fighting powerful evil men. And for years I wondered how evil men like Dr. No and Goldfinger could find seemingly expendable cadres of people to aid them in their bloody pursuits of world domination and personal economic gain. I hope you won’t think about this, because if you do, you will realize, as I did, that there are millions of people out there who eagerly vote for them in every election.

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10. If you are lucky, you are able to think about projects without rushing into them, because very often there are household members, who wield great power, who want it done now. Do you know who I’m talking about? Don’t think about it --- just do it. John told me that he started to restore a Volkswagen for his daughter’s high school graduation. But John hasn’t finished it yet and she’s now 29 and has a three year old son. Does that tell you something about a man’s propensity for procrastination --- or does it indicate that his daughter is having a struggle with our educational system?

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