The Maximum Leader‚ÄövÑv¥s rambling post has shamed me. I have been so swamped by paper grading that our loyal(?) readership has been denied my insightful(?) commentary for several days. Alas, this is not the day for insightful commentary, just a brief response to my colleague‚ÄövÑv¥s assays into the blogosphere.

Propaganda Minister: I am so thrilled you have joined us. Having honed your skills at an Ivy League humor magazine I have no doubt that your wit will enliven our space. Plus, I‚ÄövÑv¥m thrilled that when the L-bomb (liberal) gets lobbed, as it regularly does, you, not I, will be the target.

I am sad that you movie post was lost, but was happy that I had a chance to see it before it went down the memory hole. I was pleased that ‚ÄövÑv Big Trouble In Little China‚ÄövÑvp made the list, since it is ‚ÄövÑv our‚ÄövÑvp movie. Together with my posts on the propriety of gay marriage, the fact that we share a movie may lead readers to draw a conclusion about my orientation, so I will not discuss your attempts to French me during the toasting scene.

Now the Maximum Leader is directing you toward the Crown Princess. My God man, how many people do you have pimping for your insatiable ass?

My only concern about the addition of the Propaganda Minister is that I ma start receiving more friendly fire. In a personal e-mail after my ‚ÄövÑv poverty‚ÄövÑvp post, he called me ‚ÄövÑv shareholer.‚ÄövÑvp I first thought it was a clever play on my byline that referred to the irony of folks who own stocks proclaiming their poverty. Not so. Shareholder was not misspelled. It turns out that he was insinuating that I am a slut. I do hope that he will take the high-ground from here on out. Remember the security doctrine of the Cold War, my friend? Don‚ÄövÑv¥t make me launch a retaliatory strike. J

Maximum Leader: I never knew that you applied to be a cruise gigolo! Of course, I didn‚ÄövÑv¥t pry to much into my friend‚ÄövÑv¥s job searches as the end of the college years approached; everyone seemed to stressed out that I almost felt guilty knowing that my destiny was already decided: Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The cruise gig would have been exciting job, but if you had been offered the position, you would have missed out on the catamite job with Paul Tsongas.

As to the lovely Annika, I add my congratulations as well. Together with Kilgore and Analphilosopher, she is part of the sidebar troika I hit every day. Even if you weren‚ÄövÑv¥t married, I‚ÄövÑv¥m not sure how that would make any difference. You would be pitching Mike-style woo very furiously, but would be so oblique and inscrutable that the lass would never decipher your true, ignoble intentions.

All is well at Sweet Seasons farm. Yesterday‚ÄövÑv¥s unexpected pleasure was finding 11 eggs from 11 chickens. But not every chicken laid an egg ‚ÄövÑv¨ one of my Buff Orpingtons (brown egg layers) laid two eggs in an eight-hour period. Pretty neat. The calves are frolicking in the warm weather we have been enjoying. My patience with the new the two weaned Holstein-Angus mixes I purchased is starting to pay off and they are starting to tame down a bit. I was able to scratch both last night and one let me start pulling off his tags.

Non-farmers may ask what tags are. Tags are congealed manure that becomes embedded in the hair of he animal and forms a hard little ball. Many farmers raise their calves in manure packs over the winter. The stalls are never cleaned out and the animals‚ÄövÑv¥ manure gradually rises until it is up to their knees. Once it gets warmer, then animals are moved and the pens are cleaned out with a tractor. There are two reasons for this system. One reason is that the decomposing manure is a free heat source when it gets really cold. When the animals are in a (cheap) three-sided run-in shed, they need more heat. Secondly, it saves on labor. Why clean out a pen everyday when you can do it once with a tractor?

I don‚ÄövÑv¥t use this system at Sweet Seasons Farm. I pay a bit more for bedding and clean their stalls every evening before I put them in for the night (they are on pasture with access to shelter during the day when the weather is good). It may not be particularly efficient, but I do like the quiet time in the evening when I can shovel and talk to my laddies. As you may have guessed from my earlier postings, me emphasis isn‚ÄövÑv¥t on raw efficiency. Secondly, it is an aesthetic choice. I don‚ÄövÑv¥t want to have a barn that stinks to high heaven and I don‚ÄövÑv¥t like to see animals forced to wallow in their own shit. I don‚ÄövÑv¥t need the heat produced by manure since the calves have an enclosed, draft-proof barn and lots of hay as bedding. So why not keep them clean?

This is while the tags bother me. The two new guys were bigger than the day-old bottle calves I usually get. They lived in manure packs before I brought them home and the manure has congealed all over their legs, tails, and flanks. Their stomachs are solid masses of tags from laying in the filth. They don‚ÄövÑv¥t seem to be bothered by this, but it bothers me. So I have been trying to get close enough to clean them off for the last week. One down, one to go.

Well, as the Foreign Minister says, back to the trenches and the essays that need to be graded.